430 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



The workers of America, like those of Great Britain, 

 have their future in their own hands. They have the 

 majority of votes, and can return representatives to do 

 their bidding. Let them turn their whole attention to 

 the one point of rescuing the land from the hands of 

 monopolists and speculators. In this direction only lies 

 the way out of the terrible Social Quagmire in which they are 

 now floundering ; this is the next step forward towards a 

 happier social condition and a truer civilization. 



In conclusion, I should not have ventured to make these 

 suggestions to Americans on matters which, it may be 

 supposed, they are quite able to deal with themselves, 

 were it not that the principles on which my proposals are 

 founded are fundamental in their nature and of universal 

 application. For many years I have advocated similar 

 remedies for my own country, and these are at length 

 being very widely accepted by the chief organizations of 

 our workers. These remedies are equally applicable 

 and equally needed in Australia and New Zealand ; while 

 every country in Europe, from Spain to Russia, is at this 

 moment suffering the evils which necessarily result from 

 a vicious land system. Americans received this system 

 from us, as they received slavery from us. To abolish the 

 latter they incurred a fearful cost and made heroic sacrifices. 

 The system which permits and even encourages land 

 monopoly and land speculation inevitably brings about 

 another form of slavery, more far-reaching, more terrible 

 in its results, than the chattel slavery they have abolished. 

 Let the tenement houses of New York and Chicago, with 

 their thousands of families in hopeless misery, their 

 crowds of half naked and famishing children, bear witness ! 

 These white slaves of our modern civilization everywhere 

 cry out against the system of private ownership and 

 monopoly of land, which is, from its very nature, the 

 robbery of the poor and landless. This system needs no 

 gigantic war to overthrow it ; it can be destroyed without 

 really injuring a single human being. Only we must not 

 waste our time and strength in the advocacy of half-measures 

 and petty palliatives, which will leave the system itself to 



