XVII LAND NATIONALIZATION— WHY ? AND HOW ? 309 



with any approach to fairness the enormous wealth which 

 they alone produce, is rendered more disgraceful when we 

 take account of the vast extension of labour-saving 

 machinery during the epoch we are considering. 



It is calculated that we now possess steam-engines of 

 about ten million horse power, equal to a hundred million 

 men always working for us. Keckoning six million families 

 in the United Kingdom, we may say that every family has 

 the equivalent of sixteen hard-working slaves, who are never 

 idle and can always do a full day's work. What ought to be 

 the result of all this labour, in addition to the grinding 

 toil of all our working men and women ? Should we 

 not expect abundance of food and clothing for all, and 

 ample leisure for the cultivation of the mind, and the 

 enjoyment of the beauties of nature and of art ? Instead 

 of this, we have wide-spread, ever-present pauperism ; 

 crowded cities reeking with squalor, filth, drunkenness, 

 and vice ; a depopulated country ; and, as a direct conse- 

 quence of these two factors — streams polluted with wasted 

 fertilising matter, destroying at once natural beauty, 

 valuable fish-food, and human life. Everywhere we find 

 wealthy people enjoying all the luxuries and refinements 

 of a high civilization ; but amidst them we also find 

 masses of human beings living more degraded lives than 

 most savages, and working harder and more continuously 

 than most slaves. 



In our preliminary inquiry we have shown that some 

 such result as this must arise from absolute private 

 property in land. It is surely a remarkable coincidence 

 (if it be only a coincidence) that these results should 

 actually occur, in such extreme and painful development, 

 in the country where land is concentrated in the fewest 

 hands, where the legal rights of landlords are the most 

 absolute, and where, owing to the enormous aggregation 

 of wealth, the divorce between those who own and those 

 who cultivate the soil is the most complete. Let us 

 endeavour to throw further light upon this question by 

 an examination of the effects of our system in the special 

 cases of Ireland and Scotland, in which the facts are both 

 undisputed and easily accessible. 



