The Anarchistic Method. 309 



tunity. It is the passive factor in the production of 

 wealth. Like air and water it is an absolute necessity of 

 human life. When man appeared, like the open air and 

 water running in the streams or bubbling from the springs, 

 it was free to access by him. Anarchists believe that if, 

 from the beginning of human exertions upon this planet, 

 each man had been content to possess and control only so 

 much land as he could productively use, the supply of land 

 free for use always would have been and now would be 

 practically as unlimited as the supply of air and running 

 water, and that, therefore, it never would have commanded 

 a price and would not now be \ thing to buy and sell. 

 They believe that the practice of owning land that one 

 cannot and does not Avish to use, excluding others from its 

 use, has given rise to rent, or the price of land ; or, to put 

 it in other words, that the monopoly of vacant or unused 

 land is the cause of rent. Rent, therefore, does not repre- 

 sent work performed or wealth produced by the rent-taker. 

 It represents wealth transferred from a producer to a non- 

 producer as the price of a privilege that should be absolutely 

 free to all. It is evident that rent-takers, as such, are 

 idlers. They produce nothing. If, then, they subsist it 

 must be at the expense of those who labor. And by just 

 so much as they are rich others must necessarily be poor. 

 Rent is a tribute that public opinion permits non-producers 

 to levy upon producers by the simple contrivance of holding 

 large quantities of land out of use. 



The same reasoning applies when we turn to the subject 

 of interest. Rent is the product of labor paid to idlers for 

 the use of land. Interest is the product of labor paid to 

 idlers for the use of money. Rent is interest for land ; 

 interest is rent for money. Both are the products of 

 monopoly. Money is as necessary to a complicated system 

 of trade as air, water and land are to life. If the supply 

 of money Avere always equal to the demand for it as an 

 implement of exchange, each person would always have as 

 much of it as Avould represent labor directly performed or 

 products of labor surrendered by him. The only use that 

 money should have is to indicate that so much labor has 

 been directly performed or so much wealth surrendered by 

 the possessor of it; and its value is in that it Avill insure 

 to its possessor the return of a corresponding amount of 

 service or wealth upon demand. It is not in the least 



