Review of the Book:
Land Tenure and Unemployment
by Frank Geary
Mabelle Hathaway Brooks
[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April
1930]
The book Land Tenure and Unemployment was first published in
England in 1925. Frank Geary B. Sd. Econ. of the Inner Temple and the
South Eastern Circuit, Barrister-at-Law, is its author, and| A. S.
Comyns Carr, K. C. writes the preface.
The book states in its opening paragraph: "It is the purpose of
this inquiry to discover, if possible, the cause of unemployment, and
to indicate the remedy."
With this purpose in mind, the author attempts first of all, to make
it quite clear how wealth is produced. He gives as the essential
factors, land, which includes all the natural resources of the earth,
and : labor, and shows how all wealth is the application of labor to
land, "adapting, changing or combining natural products to fit
them for the satisfaction of human desires by utilizing the
reproductive forces of nature and by exchanging the products of labor."
. . . "Capital," he says, "is a derivative factor
(itself the product of labor and land) and not a primary factor. For
this reason capital cannot limit
planes. To suppose this, we
should have to suppose that the making and using of planes was a trade
secret or a patent right, when the illustration would become one of
monopoly, not of capital. ... If the power which exists in tools to
increase the productiveness of labor were the cause of interest, then
the rate of interest would increase with the march of invention. This
is not so; nor yet will I be expected to pay more interest if I borrow
a fifty dollar sewing machine than if I borrow fifty dollars worth of
needles, if I borrow a steam engine than if I borrow a pile of bricks
of equal value. Capital, like wealth, is interchangeable. It is not
one thing; it is anything to that value within the circle of exchange.
Nor yet does the improvement of tools add to the reproductive power of
capital; it adds to the productive power of labor."
And on the question of the deterioration of wealth in the form of
capital there are, said Henry George, "many forms of capital
which will not keep, but must be constantly renewed; and many which
are onerous to maintain if one has no immediate use for them. So if
the accumulator of capital helps the user of capital by loaning it to
him, does not the user discharge the debt in full when he hands it
back? Is not the secure preservation, the maintenance, the re-creation
of capital, a complete offset to the use?"
I think, said Lyon to me, that the usual definition of capital, viz, "wealth
used to produce wealth," is likely to confuse. For more wealth
cannot be produced by more wealth, more wealth can only be produced by
labor again resorting to and using land. Capital in itself does not
produce. A machine may stand still forever unless labor starts it up
and keeps it going and in repair, and without the energy of combustion
in the coal or oil, labor itself would be powerless. And if capital as
we say, increases the efficiency of labor, this means that labor in an
age of invention uses finer tools and better machines, which is but
equal to saying that labor makes an intenser use of the energy of
nature or land.
The result of this procedure necessarily is that both rent and wages
tend to increase, whereas nothing supervenes to prevent capital or
saved wealth, from its natural tendency to disintegrate, become of
inferior value and finally disappear.
Of Henry George's own theory of the origin, inevitability and
justness of interest the least said the better. It is transparently
fallacious and is the one weak spot in his otherwise brilliant
treatise. It is seldom quoted now by his adherents.
The foregoing were the arguments by which our friend sought to
justify his opinion on interest, viz that it is a robbery of labor and
with the socializing of economic rent it will disappear.
The last year or two of his life were brightened by learning that in
distant Western Australia a new school of thinkers has appeared who
also insist that interest is a
industry, but only the form of
industry, and not even this for long, where there is the opportunity
for producing more capital, and security afforded for its growth."
Next he shows that the supply of labor cannot be in excess of the
demand so long as human wants are unsatisfied and man has the
alternative of "exchanging his labor with someone who can give
him the good he wants, or by going directly to the land, producing his
own subsistence, and exchanging his surplus for other goods he needs."
This brings us to the point, "that if the supply of labor is not
in excess of the demand, and yet there are men who lack the goods they
want, the reason must be that the supply of labor is in some way
prevented from satisfying demands
either that there is
insufficient land or that labor is denied access to the land."
From here the inquiry proceeds along historical lines to ascertain
whether there is a sufficient area of land to provide opportunities
for employment for those who need the results of labor, and if there
is, what it is that is preventing the supply of labor from using the
land to satisfy its needs.
We find, and the author supports all his claims with a mass of
documentary evidence, that in Saxon and early Norman times there was
no unemployment in England. "Nature's opportunities for
employment were in abundance, and land was freely at the disposal of
him who wished to till it." However, soon after the Norman
conquest, the Lords began enclosing the waste and common land and from
that time throughout the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the enclosure
movement continued. "In the middle of the 18th century, began the
last and greatest period of enclosures, which by the middle of the
19th century had accounted for practically all the land in the
kingdom. This period saw the wholesale depopulation and devastation of
the countryside; the rise of the slums of the great industrial cities,
in which the disposessed had to take refuge; the pauperization of a
large proportion of the population of Great Britain; and the growth of
that terrible one-sided competition among the surplus of unemployed
for the jobs which appeared to be too few to go around."
In thus appropriating and monopolizing of the land the landlords
were, in fact, robbing the community of its rights over land, which
originally it clearly possessed and which should have been handed down
from generation to generation. These rights were not lost without a
struggle. In fact, the Commons of England frequently rose in armed
revolt down to the 19th century, when the countryside was so drained
that there were few left to rise.
"In Scotland this wholesale confiscation of the rights of the
community took place within comparatively recent times, and has turned
fertile valleys into desolate wastes and depopulated the whole
countryside." Moreover, confiscation is a continuing evil; it
does not cease with the generation which commits it.
However, the validity of the author's conclusions do not rest on the
origin of rights. Whether the land belongs to the community or to the
landlord, his conclusions are based on the fact that when access to
land was free to labor and opportunities were available for all, there
was no unemployment. Now, with nature's opportunities monopolized, "there
is always a large surplus of unemployed, with its complement a mass of
underpaid labor."
An investigation of the mineral resources in Great Britain and of
land tenure in urban districts, reveals the same state of affairs.
Consequently labor, except to a very limited extent, has not been able
to avail itself of the advantages of labor-saving machinery. With a
surplus of unemployed, the labor-saving inventions only serve to
oppress labor further and to throw more men out of jobs.
Capital is often denounced as the cause of unemployment and poverty,
but even Karl Marx, the great apostle of this theory, wrote in Capital
pg. 739, "The starting point of the development that gave rise to
the wage-laborer as well as to the capitalist was the servitude of the
laborer . . . The expropriation of the cultural producer or the
peasant, from the soil is the basis of the whole process. " The
capitalist could not have crushed the worker if he had not been driven
off the land and denied the alternative which Nature's resources gave
him.
Many support the theory that overpopulation is the cause of
unemployment. " If this country contained two men only and one of
them owned all the land and had no need of the labor of the other, and
refused to even give him permission to use the land, the country would
be overpopulated. " But in reality, history shows that population
seems to increase slowly when wealth is more widely distribu- ted and
a rising standard of living is maintained, and that when man is kept
down to a condition resembling the lower animals with no future, he,
like the animals, multiplies quickly.
Currency- manipulation, labor saving-machinery, and trade cycle are
other alleged causes of unemployment. The author shows how the
exponents of these various so-called causes all err with regard to the
same vital point, namely, in entirely disregarding how wealth is
really produced and what are the factors necessary for its production.
What is the remedy for the conditions we find prevalent? "The
remedy is clear. The land monopoly must be broken down and labor must
be afforded free and equal access to all land."
"This might be brought about by a gradual resumption by the
community of the rights over land . . . and a change in the basis of
taxation and rating, so that . . . industry would be freed from
penalizing taxation and the penalty fall on him who withholds land
from labor."
"Just as a high protective tariff acts as a wall around a
country to keep out a large proportion of foreign goods that in the
normal course of trade and exchange would come in, so the land
monopoly acts as a tariff protecting the interests of the owners, the
monopolist, and keeping out labor.
"This opening up of the land to labor would then have the result
of putting an end to the one-sided competition under which workers
compete for jobs but employers seldom compete for workers." With
Nature's opportunities for employment thrown open to all, the number
of potential employers would be greatly increased, and the greatest of
all competitors for labor, the demand of labor itself, would have come
into the market. Then for the first time for nearly 500 years there
would be free competition a competition which would give to each the
full product of his labor, neither more or less."
The research is extensive and detailed, and deals with the subject
most convincingly. It should become well known in this country for it
is a very- valuable addition to "land question" literature.
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