66 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



If society, realizing the genesis of land values, takes as its 

 right the value its presence creates, it removes from the individual 

 all motive to hold more than he puts to the best use, hoping to 

 realize gain from its rise in value. Land, therefore, will be 

 valueless except to the user. Hence the worker need never be 

 landless, need not solicit employment, need not regard employment 

 as a boon conferred. Right here in civilization, within sound of 

 church and school bell, hard by railway and trolley lines, accessible 

 by the daily paper, both urban and rural, are lands unused or poorly 

 used that would become available immediately for industry. 



But we have discovered still more. Inequality of opportunity 

 is the hot bed of involuntary poverty, discontent and a strong incen- 

 tive to vice and violence. With the death of hope comes the life ot 

 the fiend. A sense of injustice, well founded, underlies the discon- 

 tent of civilization; it is the cause of the social ferment that is arous- 

 ing the gravest apprehension as to our future, among thoughtful men 

 who wonder whither we are drifting. 



Communism, Anarchy on the one hand ; Special Privileges and 

 their creature the Plutocracy on the other — these are the forces lin- 

 ing up for a struggle, which, if it begins, must destroy our civilization. 



The recognition on our statute books of the equal right to the 

 use of the earth, by taking the whole value of land as public property, 

 is the flag of truce, the peacemaker, the recognition of a universal 

 brotherhood. Only in this action is safety to be found. Disdain 

 the study of this right to the use of the earth ; fritter away time in 

 dilettante recreation, and you as positively help on the coming revo- 

 lution as though you waved the red flag and the torch, and flung the 

 dynamite bomb. There are two dangerous classes, those who pooh- 

 pooh all possibility of peril, who say things are all right and are daily 

 growing better ; and the other, the ever increasing host of the mal- 

 content, beaten in life's struggle, cherishing hate for those who have 

 won. The self-satisfied, the indifferent, the too-busy and the dis- 

 believers on one side — the Anarchist and his recruiting ground the 

 hosts of the submerged, on the other ; both dangerous, equally 

 dangerous. To which do we belong ? 



