308 Evolution and Social Reform: 



ment-officials whose services are not worth to the com- 

 munitv what they get for them, are certainly not producers, 

 and whether they, in part, serve good purposes or not it 

 remains the same that producers are forcibly taxed for 

 their support. Workers are compelled to give up their 

 wealth to support law-makers and professional destroyers 

 of property and life. All this is evident notwithstanding 

 that part of it, however unfortunate, is inevitable in the 

 present state of social development. 



But besides these are other large numbers of persons who 

 receive what they do not produce. Those whose incomes 

 are wholly or partly derived from buying and selling land 

 are regarded by Anarchists, in so far as they are dealers in 

 land, as subsisting upon wealth produced by the labor of 

 others. And to this class of persons belong all those who 

 collect rents — that is, those who receive for the use of 

 their houses, machinery or other personal effects an excess 

 of price over and above what is required to cover compul- 

 sory taxes, insurance and necessary repairs upon such 



property. i i • j 



Those, also, whose incomes are wholly or partly derived 

 from interest, or the rent of money, are regarded by 

 Anarchists, as appropriating Avhat others produce. And so, 

 too, are those who, in buying and selling or manufacturing 

 for sale, receive as the result of such production and 

 exchange more than what would fairly compensate them in 

 the form of Avages for their actual labor in superintending, 

 producing or exchanging. 



In plain words, Anarchists regard rent-takers, or land- 

 lords, interest-takers, or what Mr. J. K. Ingalls calls lend- 

 lords, and protit-takers, or trade-lords, as social parasites. 

 Or. in other words. Anarchists believe, and think they can 

 scientifically prove, that anyone who receives in the process 

 of wealth-distribution more than what represents fair 

 wages for productive labor — that is, more than he actually 

 produces — appropriates something that should belong to 

 others, and thereby helps to bind a load of inevitable 

 poverty upon those who are thus defrauded of the iruits 

 of their industry. 



Let us look, for a moment, from the Anarchistic stand- 

 point, at the grounds tor tliis belief. 



Land is unproduced. It is not tlie result of human 

 labor. It is what is sometimes called a natural oppor- 



