The Single Tax versus Social Democracy
Henry George and H.M. Hyndman
[A debate that took place between Henry George and
H.M. Hyndman, St. Jame's Hall, London, 2 July 1889. Professor E.S.
Beesly occupied the chair]
The Chairman: It will perhaps conduce to the good order of this
discussion if I inform you of the conditions or regulations which have
been agreed upon between the parties. The object of the discussion is
the proposal of Mr Henry George for a single tax, and it has therefore
been arranged that he should commence by explaining that proposal of
his, but what he will say will be only in the nature of an exposition,
and ten minutes only will be allotted to him for that purpose. He will
then be followed by Mr Hyndman, who will take half-an-hour; after that
Mr George - will reply for twenty minutes to make up his half-an-hour.
The remainder of the time will be divided in this way: - Each of these
two gentlemen will take first a period of twenty minutes, and then a
period of ten minutes, Mr George having the last word.
That will make up two hours. I am quite aware that it would be out of
place for me to occupy your time, as you have come here to hear these
two disputants, and not to hear me. More-over, although it is usual at
the meetings which are held here for the chairman to be appointed
because he holds strong views in respect to the subject to be brought
before the meeting, and a strong party speech is naturally expected
from him, we are not here for that purpose to-night. We are here to
have a discussion on which no vote is to be taken; so it would be
evidently out of place if I were to show any partiality by arguing one
way or other at the commencement of the debate. I shall endeavour to
discharge my duties as fairly and as impartially as possible, and I
have no doubt I shall receive every assistance from this meeting.
(Hear, hear.) We have here, no doubt, a great many who sympathise with
Mr George, and a great many who sympathise with Mr Hyndman; but there
are also, no doubt, a great many who have not made up their minds at
all, and who are naturally seeking to be informed. It would, of
course, be impossible, to prevent all expression of feeling, but I
trust we may expect that the two parties will attempt to rival one
another, not in the loudness of their expressions of approbation qr
disapprobation, and still less in the length to which those
expressions of opinion are kept up; because you will see very clearly
that if there were to be anything of that sort it would add
considerably to the difficulties your chairman will be under in
carrying out the arrangements that have been agreed upon. (Hear,
hear.) There appear before you to-night two very able men, both
thoroughly well acquainted with the subject which they are going to
discuss; both of them completely familiar with its discussion. We
shall therefore have, I feel sure, a most interesting and instructive
debate. I am looking forward to that, and you are also, and,
therefore, without wasting your time any longer, I will call upon Mr
George to open the discussion.
Mr Henry George:
As to the injustice and wrong of present social conditions, the
parties who are here represented to-night both agree. We both agree,
moreover, as to the end to be sought - a condition of things in which
there shall be opportunities for work for all, leisure for all, a
sufficiency of the necessities of life for all, an abundance of the
reasonable luxuries of life for all. (Hear, hear.) We differ as to the
means by which that end is to attained. Mr Hyndman styles himself a
Social Democrat: I a Single Tax man. Let me state why we have adopted
that name and what we mean by it.
Looking over the civilised world to-day, we see that labour nowhere
gets its just dues. (Hear, hear.) We see there is everywhere a fringe
of unemployed labour. We see all the phenomena that are called
sometimes over-production and industrial depression; we reject as
superficial the theory that this is caused by there being too many
people; that this is caused by there not being enough work; that this
is caused by the multiplication of labour-saving machinery. We say
that until human wants are satisfied there can be no such thing as
over-production (applause) that until all have enough there is yet
plenty of work. (Hear, hear.) We trace the cause of all these
phenomena to one great fundamental wrong. We ask what work is, and we
see that what we call productive work is alteration in place or in
form of the raw material of the universe that we call land. We see
that man is a land animal; that his very body comes from the land;
that all his productions consist in but the working up of the land;
and that land to him is absolutely necessary; and we behold everywhere
the phenomena of which I have spoken. We see everywhere that this
element, indispensable to all, has been made the property of some.
(Hear, hear) To that wrong we trace all the great social evils of
which we complain to-day, and we propose to right them by going to the
root and removing that wrong. (Loud applause)
It is perfectly clear that we are all here with equal rights to the
use of the universe. We are all here equally entitled to the use of
land. How can we secure that equal right? Not by the dividing up of
land equally; that in the present stage of civilisation is utterly
impossible. Equality could not be secured in that way, nor could it be
maintained. The ideal way, the way which wise men, desirous of
according to each his equal right, would resort to in a new country,
would be to treat the land as the property of the whole, to allow
individuals to possess and to use it, paying for the whole a proper
rent for any superiority in the piece of land they were using. (Hear.)
The ideal plan would allow every man who wished to use land to obtain
it, and to possess what he wished to use so long as no one else wished
to use it, and if the land be so superior that more than one wanted to
use it, a proper payment according to its superiority should be made
to the community, and by that community used for the common benefit.
(Hear, hear.)
Whether it would be better wherever circumstances change, to change
the rent every year; whether it would be better to secure payment at a
fixed rent for a certain time; there may be some differences of
opinion. In my opinion it would be better to adopt a flexible system
which would allow a change every year. Now if that were done, if the
land were let out, those using it paying its premium value to the
community, it would amount to precisely the same thing if, instead of
calling the payment rent, we called it taxes. "A rose by any
other name would smell as sweet." In an old country, however,
there is a very great advantage in calling the rent a tax. In an old
country there is a very great advantage in moving on that line. People
are used to the payment of taxes. They are not used to the formal
ownership of land by the community; and to the letting of it out in
that way. Therefore, as society is now constituted, and in our
communities as they now exist, we propose to move towards our ideal
along the line of taxation. (Hear, hear.) If we were to take the rent
of land for the community, one of the first and best uses which would
be commended to us would be that of abolishing of taxes that bear in
any way upon production, or in any way hamper industry, or in any way
increase the price of those things that people wish to use and can use
without injury to others. Therefore, as bringing in the idea of
abolishing these taxes we call our measure the Single Tax. (Hear,
hear.) We would abolish all taxation that falls on industry, and raise
public revenue by this means, and move to our end, the taking of the
full rental value of land for the use of the community, in this way.
This name, Single Tax, expresses our method; not our ideal.
What we are really is liberty men; what we believe in is perfect
freedom: What we wish to do is to give each individual in the
community the liberty to exert his powers in any way he pleases,
bounded only by the equal liberty of others. (Applause.) We would
abolish all taxes, and begin with the most important of all
monopolies, the fruitful parent of lesser monopolies, that monopoly
which disinherits men of their birthright; that monopoly which puts m
the hands of some that, element absolutely indispensable to the use of
all; and we believe not that labour is a poor weak thing that must be
coddled or protected by Government. We believe that labour is the
producer of all wealth - (applause) - that all labour wants is a fair
field and no favour, and, therefore, as against the doctrines of
restriction we raise the banner of liberty and equal right in the
gospel of free, fair play. (Loud cheers.)
Mr H. M. Hyndman:
Mr Chairman, friends and fellow citizens, - In rising here to-night
to oppose; as a remedy for the evils of our present society, that
proposal for a Single Tax which Mr George has just laid before you, I
shall first of all commence by stating those points in which we
Social-Democrats - and I stand here as a revolutionary Social-Democrat
- (applause) - agree with Mr George. At page 20 of Mr George's book, "Progress
and Poverty," you will find these words: "That wages,
instead of being drawn from capital, are in reality drawn from the
product of the labour for which they are paid." Very true. So say
we; and we say consequently the profit which enures results from the
unpaid labour of the worker employed by the capitalist. (Applause.) I
say we agree with that statement of Mr George's, and we draw from it
that inevitable deduction. Secondly, we agree with him in this: that
the increase of the population is not the cause of poverty - (cheers)
- and that Malthus, as Mr George has most ably and elaborately shown,
is entirely wrong. Thirdly, we agree with him that the remedies
proposed for the present state of things, those which find favour at
the present time, economy in governments, limitation of families,
better education for the working classes (which simply means better
wage-slaves for the capitalists), greater industry by the workers
(which simply means an increase of production for the capitalists to
take and the landlords to share), thrift and temperance.
Thrift because, under present conditions, as Mr George would admit,
mere thrift cannot change the conditions under which the mass of the
working population and many of the middle class have to suffer. Even
temperance will not alter the, economic conditions in which the people
live. It may be an individual virtue; it may be an individual
advantage; but it will not make the wage-slave less a wage-slave; nor
the cottier tenant of Ireland less at the mercy of the landlord.
(Hear, hear.) Trade unions will not attain that object. There Mr
George and I would agree. Co-operative societies which; at present;
are merely for distribution, more general distribution of land by way
of peasant proprietary, are also remedies which are useless under the
present condition of things. That takes our friends who support Mr
George a very long way, as I shall presently show.
Then, fourthly; that the tendency of the times is towards production
on a larger and larger scale, with larger and larger capital, alike in
agriculture and in manufacture. That you will find laid down in "Progress
and Poverty," and in "Social Problems" at page 300. The
consequence of that shall call attention to.
Fifthly, that the tendency of wages at the present time is to fall in
proportion to the amount of wealth created by the workers - that as
wealth increases wages become a less proportion to the amount of
wealth so created. Further, Mr George says that he is in favour of
collective ownership and collective management of monopolies.
Now, I say all this taken together brings us a very long way on the
road to that Social Democracy which, as a matter of fact, I am here to
champion as the delegate of the Social-Democratic Federation.
(Applause.) Wherein then, do we differ? First, that a rise in rent in
countries where the capitalist system of production exists reduces the
rate of wages. I say that it does not. I say that rent does not reduce
the wages in countries where the capitalist system of production
prevails; that rent only reduces the rate of wages in quite
exceptional circumstances. I do not deny that rent reduces what Mr
George calls wages, what the cottier tenant proprietor can get out of
the soil of Ireland. But the condition of Ireland is not the condition
of America, nor the condition of the majority of countries. It is an
exceptional condition, and in this exceptional condition, no doubt,
rent reduces that which the worker retains out of the soil.
Secondly, that rent absorbs all the difference between wages and the
total wealth produced as that wealth increases. That, we say, is not
so, and you have only got to look around you in this country to see
that it is not so. Figures and facts will prove it unmistakably.
Thirdly, that the taxation of land values up to their limit, the
confiscation of rent namely, and the equivalent reduction would
benefit the people. I maintain that it would not. That, too,
competition can be other than harmful: we hold that competition in
itself is harmful. (Hear, hear.) Further, Mr George does not propose
to nationalise the land. We do. (Hear, hear.)
Mr George proposes this. He states on page 364 of "Progress and
Poverty," "It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is
only necessary to confiscate rent, to abolish all taxation save that
on land values." Again, we contend that the monopoly of land is
not the chief cause of industrial depression at the present time not
the chief cause. Now why, then, agreeing so far with Mr George as we
do, why is it that we Social-Democrats should in the country and in
London oppose him, and that I should be appointed on this occasion to
debate with him upon this subject? Because, Mr Chairman, we have
arrived at a point where social questions are the questions of the day
- (applause) -- and where political questions are becoming more and
more insignificant every day. This is due in great part to Mr George's
own exertions. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we should
proceed upon a true and scientific basis in order that we may achieve
as an organised democracy those results which we both are aiming at.
(Applause.)
I say that the rent of land -- the increase of the rent of land does
not lower wages. It has not lowered them in America. Wages in America
and in Australia have not fallen as the rent of land has advanced.
(Hear, hear.) I can speak confidently in relation to Australia,
especially in Victoria, where, since the enactment by the working
classes of practically an eight hours law, wages have risen relatively
to what they had been, and, therefore, the increase of rent in that
Country has not lowered wages. In the early days of California, with
which Mr George is acquainted, no doubt wages were nominally
exceedingly high but the real wages, the purchasing power of wages,
are higher to-day in America than they were twenty or twenty-five
years ago in various trades. Mr Arnold Toynbee, with whom I was
acquainted, went very carefully into this matter, and although he took
a different point of view from me his statements have never been
controverted. He maintained that the rise of rent in various countries
in no case reduced wages in those countries as wealth increased. But
we need not, as a matter of fact, go from England in order to discover
that. Between 1879 and 1888, as we are all perfectly well aware the
rent of land fell considerably in Great Britain, but while rent has
fallen 25 per cent, can anyone say that wages have risen to the same
extent? (Cries of "No.") Certainly not. Yet according to Mr
George's law, if rent has fallen wages ought to have risen. I ask the
working men here present, have they risen? ("No, no.") Then
again between 1850 and 1878 rent rose enormously in England, and
during that same time wages rose - the purchasing power of wages.
(Hear, hear.) Therefore, the very basis of Mr George's argument;
namely, that rent rises when wages fall and falls when wages rise, is
not borne out in this country, not borne out in America, not borne out
in Australia.
What then becomes of his argument as laid down in "Progress and
Poverty"? But to go farther. Mr George proposes to confiscate
rent. (Hear, hear.) From our point of view as Social Democrats we have
no objection to that - not at all. (Laughter and "Hear, hear.")
Confiscation, as we contend, is going on to-day - (applause) - the
confiscation of the well-being; the health, and the very life of the
people by the landlords and capitalists. Here I may point out, Mr
Chairman, that so far from my holding any brief to defend the
landlords; such as the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of
Westminster, the Duke of Sutherland, and the other great landowners of
this country, I sincerely hope that we may yet have the power to upset
these monopolists and other monopolists, and to really nationalise the
land of England. (Applause.) I am not here under any circumstance
whatever to defend the landlord, but want to get at him - (laughter) -
not merely to confiscate rent, but to take the land for the people and
to organise production upon the soil. But, says Mr George, the taking
of economic rent - the taking, that is to say, of land values - will
produce a very serious effect.
What is the amount in England? For, after all, we are arguing in
England. If ever I have the good fortune to go to New York, I shall be
happy to argue with Mr George there. But we are arguing at present in
England, and what is the economic rent of England? It is taken at
about £60,000,000 a year which I admit is a large sum. Mr George
says tax that rent. Take it and apply it to what? Mark, he has not
proposed to apply that sum to building better dwellings for the
people, for the providing of better parks and open spaces, or for the
better education of the people; he has proposed these £60,000,000
to what? To the reduction of the general taxation upon industry.
Now to whom would that general taxation so taken off go? I say that
it would go without a penny's worth of deduction into the pockets of
the great capitalists of this country of ours. (Loud cheers and cries
of "No.") To whom else would it go? Mr George does not
propose to interfere with competition. Mr George says that competition
is a right thing, that the man who has exceptional faculties aught to
rise upon the shoulders of his fellows. (A voice: "Hear, hear.")
If they are foolish enough to bend under the burden so much the worse
for them. (Hear, hear.) So say not we. We say that, competition, for
profit produces more degradation than any form of production the world
has ever seen. He leaves competition untouched.
The labourer who goes to the factory or dockyard gates now begging
for work would have to go to the factory gates under the same
conditions if the Single Tax proposals were carried out. I maintain
that the miserable wage-slaves would be in precisely the same state
ten years hence after rent had been confiscated as the are at the
present moment; and that the only people who would benefit would be
the Rothschilds, the Barings, the Chamberlains, the Mundellas, and
such people who pile up great fortunes out of the workers of to-day.
(Applause.) Very well, that would be so, and I challenge contradiction
upon it. I ask how can the Single Tax be a remedy? What is the reason
of this terrible number of unemployed; the existence of which we
deplore? Mr George says it is on account of the land not being taxed.
But mark here again, he does not propose to relieve the land of rent.
He simply proposes to transfer that rent to the State, and, therefore,
the man who desires to go upon the land will have to go upon it with a
deduction for the purpose of getting upon it precisely the same as he
has to-day. He does not propose to relieve him from rent, and I do not
say that under competition it is just that he should, But how is the
labourer to get at the land?
To-night Mr George has told us that he is in favour of a yearly
assessment of land, if I do not misunderstand him. Now, there happens
to be upon this platform to-night an Indian gentleman who could tell
you the result of an annual assessment of land in India where the very
proposal which Mr George has laid before you is in operation. The land
in Madras was nationalised in accordance with Mr George's views, and
was assessed annually to the amount of its full rental value. The
result was such an enormous increase of poverty that the Government in
India was absolutely obliged to give it up as a complete failure.
(Hear, hear.) As I am upon the subject of India, I may mention that Mr
George does me the honour at page 106 of "Progress and Poverty"
to quote some articles of mine that I wrote some years ago, pointing
out the excessive poverty of that country. But how does that excessive
poverty arise? In India the land is taxed in precisely the way that Mr
George proposes. The full economic rent of the land is taken to the
amount of £22,000,000 or £23,000,000 a year, and is the
sheet-anchor of the taxation of India - (applause) - and yet there is
no such poverty in the world as in our great and glorious Empire of
India. (Cheers and applause.) There is, therefore, some other reason
than the monopoly of land for this excessive poverty, and, singular to
say, Mr George notices it and then passes it by. That reason is the
draining of produce from that country; the taking from the people that
which they produce under pressure for capitalist drain.
We say whether you confiscate rent or whether you do not, this
appalling poverty would remain so long as you left the capitalist
system untouched. (Cheers.) Now then, therefore, I say that Mr
George's remedy is just as hopeless as any that he denounces. The
income of England is variously estimated, but if I take it from £1,200,000,000
to £1,300,000,000, I neither overstate it nor understate it. The
total amount of wages which is taken by the working class is variously
estimated. I take it £300,000,000; others take it at £400,000,000
to £500,000,000. The economic rent of land is taken at £60,000,000,
which I believe is consider ably over what it is. (Hear, hear.) Add
that amount to the total amount paid in wages, be it £300,000,000
or £500,000,000, you will still have many hundreds of millions
left between the amount of the rent and wages added together and the
total income of the nation. (Hear, hear.) To whom does all that go?
Mr, George would not deny that most of it goes to the shareholders in
the railways, the shareholders in the banks, the shareholders and
owners of the great instruments of production. Those are the men to
whom that great difference goes, and I say if Mr George taxes the
rent, whatever it may be in this country, it leaves those hundreds of
millions untouched, and the condition of the working population will
remain precisely the same as it is to-day (Hear, hear.) Therefore, our
object, as Social Democrats, is not mere burden shifting. (Hear,
hear.)
We do not particularly hate landlords more than capitalists, or
capitalists more than landlords. The alligator and the crocodile; it
matters not which it is from the point of view of those upon whom they
feed (Laughter.) We wish to get rid of both, and what we are aiming at
is the abolition of the wages system - (Hear, hear.) - and that aim
can only be accomplished by the abolition of private property in the
means and instruments of production including the land. (Hear, hear.)
Mr George agrees with us that capital is rolling up into larger and
larger masses, and if he would only look at home in his own country he
would find that that is on of the principal reasons of the number of
unemployed whom he himself has seen around in the streets of San
Francisco, as I did myself in 1870 on the sand lots. The great factory
farms are directed and worked it may be by 500 men in the summer and
ten in the winter. Where do the 490 go? They are a body of men
discharged to find labour where they can. A new machine is introduced
into any department of industry which ought to be useful and
beneficial to the whole community.
The result under present conditions is that men are thrown out on the
streets as unskilled labourers, while greater wealth is produced with
fewer hands, and the capitalist alone benefits by that monopoly which
the machinery gives him: (Applause.) Mr George says m some parts of
his works that he is in favour of taking over all monopolies by the
State. Very well, then. The State is controlled by the people, is not,
therefore, such a hideous enemy after all. (Hear, hear.) The State
to-day controlled by the landlords and capitalists is an enemy to the
whole people, and I maintain that even the middle class themselves and
the well-to-do are stunted, in, their faculties and their power of
enjoying life by the miserable system we have to labour under.
(Cheers.) If, then, this concentration of the means of production in
fewer and fewer hands, if the rolling up of capital into larger and
larger masses, renders it more and more impossible for an individual
man to come to the front; as Mr George says in "Social Problems"
it does, then, as a matter of fact, you have to deal with these larger
and a larger growths of capital even before you touch the land.
We Social Democrats do not claim to be filled with any divine
afflatus. We do not believe in any utopia come down from above. But we
build up our ideas from the facts we see under our eyes every day.
(Applause.) What do we see at the present time? We see that in this
very capitalist system, which, based on the devil-take the-hindmost
for the many and economic harmonies for the few, the capitalists are
eating up one another, and that the present system means monopoly in
every direction. You have the salt "ring," you have the
copper "ring," this "ring" and that; and
especially on Mr George's side of the Atlantic. Such "rings"
are being organised every day, not "rings" in relation to
the land only, but "rings" in relation to every department
of manufacture. (Hear, hear.) These rings crush the worker far more
than the initial monopoly of the land. (Applause.) Further than this,
we see that it is impossible under present conditions speedily to
nationalise or communalise that which has not already passed into the
company form. I do not say that in countries where you have the
communal system still surviving, as for instance in Russia, it may not
be possible to pass direct into a higher and more elevated form of it.
But here, in this country, circumstances are altogether different, and
industries must pass through the company form. The present system need
not have been accompanied by the horrors it has been, but being
historically inevitable it is working out its complete evolution.
At the present moment the capitalist class has proclaimed its own
bankruptcy. The landlord, after all, in this country, and even in
America, is but a sleeping partner in the process of expropriation
which is carried on at the expense of the workers. (Cheers.) If you
kill the sleeping partner and leave the active on at work what better
are you? (Hear, hear.) We say look at the facts around you. Look at
the great railway organizations. This is not a question of the wages
of superintendence. The manager of a railway is paid at the outside £3,000
or £4,000 a year; the manager of the London and Westminster Bank
is paid at the outside £3;000 or £4,000 a year; the managers
of the coal companies, as of other things, are paid at the outside a
few thousands a year. But those who never superintend anything, those
who can roam around the Mediterranean superintending nothing, but
consuming an enormous deal, take the lion's share. Then I ask you
this, Mr Chairman and fellow citizens, even from the ethical point of
view if you are going, as a matter of fact to tax income from land,
why not tax income from all robbery of labour? Why not put a stop to
that confiscation of labour which makes the mass of the people mere
slaves in the hands of the few? Social Democrats assert that the
poverty and misery to-day are the necessary result of the capitalist
system, and if Mr George's Single Tax were applied our principles
would have to be taken into consideration before one human being who
works for his living would be in any way benefited. These which I
advocate are spreading throughout the length and breadth of our land;
not merely as a result of our agitation, not merely owing to the
misery and poverty that exists, but in accordance with the natural
evolution of society, and when they triumph, as they most assuredly
will the establishment of Social Democracy will give the fullest
outlet to every man and woman. I say that Mr George as he stands on
this platform is a reactionary and not a revolutionist. (Cheers.) I
say that we should combine together in order to work for the
co-operative organization of society in which the railways, the mines,
the machines, which at present dominate the worker, shall be the
handmaids of labour, and where labour shall have its full reward, and
the mental capacity, the physical power, and the health of the people
their full development - a condition of things now easily within our,
reach but such as the world has never yet seen. (Loud applause.)
Mr George:
Mr Hyndman states that rent does not reduce wages - the increase of
rent - and he cites England and the United States for that. He tells
us that in the United States wages have not fallen as the rent of land
has increased. He has referred to "Progress and Poverty." In
"Progress and Poverty," I attempted to do what is
indispensable and necessary to anyone who would think clearly upon
these subjects, to define my terms. I have, in the first place, never
stated anything more than that the increase of rent produces a
tendency to the decrease of wages, and by wages in all such parts as
that, I mean that proportion which goes to the labourer. Money wages
may increase or decrease without the proportion being affected.
In the United States as a fact, with the rise of land values
everywhere we have most exactly seen the decrease of wages as a
proportion. Further than that, while in some vocations trade unions
have raised wages as they have raised them here, the rise has never
been commensurate with the improvement in production and the
increasing wealth; and while land everywhere has been increasing in
value in the United States, so everywhere have we become accustomed to
what a few years ago we knew nothing about - the tramp and the pauper.
(Hear, hear.) Mr Hyndman says that sent in England amounts to but £60,000,000.
He is surely thinking of agricultural land. To-day in England mining
rent arid rent of city and town lands is much greater than the rent of
agricultural land. (Cheers.) We put the rent of Great Britain to-day
at from £150,000,000 to £200,000,000 per year. We propose to
take that for the benefit of the whole community instead of allowing
it to go, as it does now, into the pockets of individuals. Is not
that, a change that ought to amount to something? (Hear; hear.) But
that mere transference is but a little of the good that will result.
What we aim at is not so much the taking of rent for the use of the
community as freeing the land for the use of labour. (Loud cheers.)
Mr: Hyndman says that if rent were taken and taxes abolished the
labourers would be knocking at the factory gates and the gates of the
dockyards as they do now. They would not. (Hear, hear.) With taxes on
land values, with taxes on economic rent from land, whether it was
vacant land or the site of a factory, or pleasure ground or farm,
would compel all over this country the "dogs in the manger"
to let go their grasp. (Hear, hear and cheers.) It would give
opportunities by which labour could employ itself. Mr Hyndman says
that he speaks of labour as it is in the great cities of England
to-day not as it is among the cottiers of Scotland or the small
farmers of Ireland. Everywhere the social organization rests on these
men. Open the land to the little labourers of Ireland; open the land,
to the crofters of Scotland; open the land to the agricultural
labourers of your own English counties, and how many men would be
knocking at the factory gates? (Applause.) Where do those men come
from? They are driven off the land. (Hear, hear.) I myself have seen a
family evicted in Ireland, and that same family in a manufacturing
town begging for work at any price. (Hear, hear.) Open the land. There
is enough of it; and that is all that is necessary to do.
Mr Hyndman speaks of India as though the Single Tax were in operation
there. I heard that the other night from Mr Samuel Smith, and it did
not surprise me, but it does surprise me to hear it to-night from Mr
Hyndman, who, in 1878 and 1879 wrote a series of articles in the "Nineteenth
Century" that fully explained the cause of the poverty of India.
(Hear, hear.) Does the Single Tax admit of a salt tax? Even if the tax
on land in India were what we mean by our proposal we do not say that
given the Single Tax there can be no other evil, any more than a man
who believes in temperance would deny that the people might be
temperate and yet be oppressed. It is not the value of the land that
is taxed in India; it is, as Mr Hyndman has shown, the cultivator. It
is as Seymour Keay showed in his series of articles afterwards, not
the value of land, but the ryot, who is so heavily taxed that when he
pays his taxes he has to take the earnings of his wife and children to
supplement his own - (shame) - so taxed that he declares that the
Survey Department of the Indian Government is nothing but a scientific
instrument for squeezing the last drop of sweat out of the ryot; so
taxed that he says if the most rack-rented peasants of Ireland were to
go there they would find in three months that the little finger of the
Anglo-Indian Government was more than the loin of the Irish landlord.
(Hear, hear.)
We say that all it is necessary to do is to give men their natural
rights. We say all it is necessary to do is to open the land to
labour. (Hear, hear.) I do not take the same view of labour that our
friends of the Social Democratic Federation do. They seem to have
taken holus bolus the arguments of the old political economists who
were writing for the purpose of proving that the poor you must always
have with you. ("No!") They seem to have accepted as a
natural law that the actual wages of labour are merely what the
labourer can subsist on. They seem to have given capital the first
place in the order of production. Capital does not come first. Land
and labour are the only two absolutely necessary factors to the
production of wealth. (Hear, hear.) Capital is the child of labour
exerted upon land. (Cheers.) Give labour access to land and it will
produce capital. Give labour access to land and the power of the
capitalists to grind the masses must disappear. (Hear, hear.)
What does that power came from? Merely from the fact that men are
unable to employ themselves upon the land. It is the poverty of the
labourers, not the wealth of the capitalist, that is the evil to be
removed. Mr Hyndman quarrels with competition. (Hear, hear.) He wants
to abolish it, but to abolish competition would be to abolish freedom.
(Loud applause and cries of "No, no.") How can you abolish
competition except by saying to man, "Thou shalt not"? How
can you abolish competition save by preventing men from doing what
they have a perfect right to do - ("No, no," and hear, hear)
- and what it is for the interest of the community that they should
do? Why, to-day, what are the grievances that the working classes
everywhere justly complain of? The restriction of competition. It is
monopoly, and monopoly simply means the restriction of competition.
(Hear, hear.) How is competition to be abolished? We have a right to
ask the Social Democrats what they propose to do, and how they propose
to do it. All I can find in their platform that goes to the social
question is this: "The production of wealth to be regulated by
society in the common interests of all its members." (Cheers.) "The
means of production, distribution, and exchange to be declared and
treated as collective or common property." (Hear, hear.) They
propose to take everything - (laughter and hear, hear) - not merely
that which belongs of natural right to all men equally - namely, the
land - but also that which by natural right belongs to the man who has
produced it. (Hear, hear.) How are they to get possession of it? By
buying it or by taking it? If by taking it, it is a big job. (Hear,
hear and laughter.) If by buying it, what are you doing but taking the
capital from the masses in order to give it to those people whom you
now say hold the capital?
You say the nation ought to abolish competition. Why you could not
abolish competition without subjecting man to the worst form of
tyranny - (Hear, hear and "No, no") - and without stopping
all progress. It is where competition is not permitted that there is
stagnation. (Hear, hear.) It is the competition of manufacturer with
manufacturer that leads to the adoption of inventions in manufactures.
It is the competition of steamship owner with steamship owner that
gives you those greyhounds of the sea. It is the competition of
producer with producer, it is the competition of tradesman with
tradesman that brings to such a city as this all that is necessary to
supply its wants. (Dissent, and cries of "Order" and
cheers.)
What we want is full competition. (Hear, hear.) What we want to do is
to abolish monopolies, and it is to these monopolies, and not to the
earnings of capital, that the great fortunes to which my opponent has
alluded are due. What are the causes of these big fortunes? In the
United States, go wherever you please, you find that the real element
is land ownership. It is a great mistake to think that the only
landlords are those which pose as such. To-day, who are the great
owners of the Irish estates? Not so much the Irish landlords as the
English banks and insurance societies. (Hear, hear.) Take our, Jay
Gould, the most conspicuous example of a great fortune made outside
the rise of land values. He made his first stride by getting hold of a
piece of land and taking advantage of its rise in value, and he is
to-day the owner of millions of acres. He made his money in what? In a
public franchise, that we would abolish. Mr Hyndman speaks of the
comparatively small amount of rent and the great amount of capital.
What does he count as capital? Capital is a real thing. Capital is
something produced by labour from land. Public debts are not capital.
Franchises are not capital.
Look to-day what is included as capital to swell those figures
showing how much greater capital is than land ownership. There is your
public debt. Does that represent any capital? If it were wiped out
tomorrow, would there be one iota the less capital in this country?
There are such companies as that in connection with the printing
machine that is now being introduced. They have a machine perhaps
worth £100 and they propose to capitalise it at £100,000.
What is there there? Not capital, but the expectation of future
profits. So it is with the great mass of that which is vaguely treated
as capital. Capital is wealth produced by labour from land, used again
in increasing the production of wealth. And not only will it not hurt
labour to leave to capital its full reward but we must leave to
capital its full natural reward, if we would have a progressive
community - (cheers) - and if we would give each what is his due.
(Hear, hear.)
What the labourers have to fight against is not competition - (hear
hear and "Yes") - but the restriction of production to their
injury. Let there be competition all around from the highest to the
lowest, fencing in no class against competition. Abolish monopoly
everywhere, put all men on an equal footing and then trust to freedom.
In that way we would have the most delicate system of co-operation
that can possibly be devised by the wit of man. The fight of labour is
not against capital; it is against monopoly. Why just think of that
state of things. when all the means of production belong to the
community and all production is regulated by the State, when every
individual would have, his work, his time of work, and everything else
prescribed for him; when it would be utterly impossible for men to
employ themselves! To abolish competition you must have restriction;
you must call on the coercive powers of the State. How else are you
going to do it? Supposing you organise industry in the way our friends
dream of, if any individuals go outside of this organization and
propose to compete with it, how are you going to stop their
competition but by coming in with the strong arm of the law, and
putting an end to it? Why such a state of society, instead of being
the ideal to which the Anglo-Saxon community ought to aspire, would be
going back to a worse despotism than, that of ancient, Egypt.
(Applause and cries of "No, no.")
Mr Hyndman:
What I would desire to point out to Mr George, in the first instance
is that the tramp and the pauper a appear periodically in the United
States, and that at these periods of great depression the rent of land
is practically permanent. It may rise steadily as he says it does, but
these depressions occur periodically, and are, therefore, caused not
by the rise of rent, but by some other cause, which I have endeavoured
to point out - namely, this enormous concentration of the means of
production both in manufactures and agriculture. According to Mr
George, the rent of land is a permanently growing quantity, and,
therefore, I maintain these periodic depressions cannot be caused by
that, but by something which varies; and that variation is the
application of ca ital to the various industries.
I will deal with this question of monopolies later on, and I will
show that this present capitalist system is necessarily a monopoly -
that capital means monopoly. The mean of production are monopolised by
the capitalists, with the landlords as their sleeping partners, and
those who have no other property than the force of labour in their
bodies are compelled by that monopoly to sell it for practically a
subsistence wage.
Now I am accused by Mr George of merely having given the figures for
agricultural rent. This is a mistake on his part. It is a very
remarkable thing to me that these figures of Mr Arnold Toynbee's
having been before the public now far six years, Mr George has not
taken the trouble to criticise them. Mr Toynbee took the greatest
pains to get at these figures, and their accuracy has never been
challenged: According to them, the rent of land - which is now very
much reduced - was at that time 69 millions a year. According to Mr
Toynbee's analysis, the economic rent would not be more than 30
millions out of the 69 millions; and that is true, because the rest of
it is return to capital invested in the land. But again, Mr George
says that I left out the City lands. I did not do anything of the
kind. The ground rent of the cities of England taken in the same year
as I have taken the agricultural rents, amount to 30 millions a year.
Those figures are unchallengeable; if anything, they are over rather
than under the mark. But, after all, what does this difference in the
estimate matter with reference to the present argument.
Say that we take 150 millions more or less to reduce the taxation of
the country, what the better is the worker? These figures, 60 millions
or 150 millions, sound very big, but the important question is who
gets the money? - (Hear, hear.) - or, rather, who gets the wealth?
because money is merely the symbol of wealth. Whether it be 6o
millions or 150 millions which by means of the Single Tax on land is
to be applied to the reduction of taxation in England or America, the
capitalist classes will get the benefit of it and not the workers.
(Applause.) Mr George says the object is to free the land to the
influence and the power of labour. (Hear, hear.) But that is exactly
what he does not do. ("Yes, yes.") It is just as impossible
for the worker to get upon the land after the Single Tax as before.
(No, no.") I say, "Yes, yes,"' because Mr George is
going to tax the full economic rent, and not only so; but he is going
to exact it every year. There is to be no permanency of tenure, and
nothing to encourage this investment of capital which he is so anxious
to bring about. A man is to be assessed his full economic rent every
year, so that so far from freeing the land for the labourer to get
upon it, Mr George will keep him from the land more than he is kept
to-day. ("No, no.")
How are the unemployed knocking at the dock gates and the factory
doors to get upon the land? No doubt, as Mr George says, monopolists
of land are the dogs in the manger - I do not deny that for a moment,
and we are anxious to get at them but where is the poor dock labourer,
who has nothing but the force of labour in his body, to get his tools
to go upon this land which is thus nominally freed? (Loud applause.)
Again, when he gets there, how is he to meet the competition of the
big factory farmers? (Hear, hear.) If this competition of which Mr
George speaks is such a glorious thing, I should like to know how the
man who is working with a spade on ten acres is going to compete with
the great factory farmer in Dakota who is working 100,000 acres with
steam ploughs and all the best machinery. (Hear, hear.) If Mr George
would only try competition under those conditions he would very soon
find that it would grind him to the earth ("No.") I have
seen it done. I have seen it myself actually taking place.
When I landed in America in 1870, the farmers of the West were a
fairly well-to-do folk, and I have seen them crushed down by their own
competition and the concentration of capital to such a condition that
by far the majority of them are now mortgaged to the hilt. Mr George
will say that if the full value of the land were taken you could not
mortgage their land. Ask Mr Dadabhai Naoroji, who is on this platform,
how the ryots of India mortgage. They mortgage their crops when they
are unable to mortgage the land. The borrow money upon their crops,
instead of upon the land, at excessive rates of interest. Therefore, I
say this system Mr George is proposing does not give free access to
the land, and that even if it did give free access to the land, the
effect of competition and the concentration of capital would crush out
the small man who went on it with inferior tools.
Further, I maintain that this competition which Mr George holds up as
a thing to encourage and aim at must necessarily mean the degradation
of the mass of people (Applause.) Mr George says that he is surprised
that I should talk about India in the way I have done. I believe that
I have truly pointed out what the cause of the poverty in India is,
but I have also shown that his remedy is applied there, the land being
taxed up to its full economic value, and therefore there are very much
greater causes of poverty than merely the monopoly of the land. The
land of India is owned by the State, but the capitalist comes in
between the ryot and the State and robs him of his production, and the
drain of capital to England for interest on railways and so forth
burdens and oppresses the ryot even more than the land tax. Mr George
says that by natural right you ought to have the land.
We are not arguing about natural rights; we are arguing about the
condition of society in which we live. We say that we are here owing
to a series of causes over which we had no control whatever. We have
to look at the history of this development of this development of
capitalism in England in order to know how to control and overthrow
it. That is the way we look at it - not from any notions of natural
right. We see in our midst a relentless conflict to-day, the result of
which is that the worker lives but half the age of the class to which
I belong; and hundreds and thousands of children are growing up
rickety and scrofulous because you fill their heads before you fill
their bellies. (Applause.) The competition we have all around us in
every direction must mean the degradation of the masses. (Hear, hear.)
Co-operation such as we Social Democrats are striving for would afford
the means and opportunities for the development of the faculties of
each and all; and this national and international co-operation is
necessary for the future of mankind. (Loud cheers.)
I am asked what capital is. I have before said that capital consists
of the means and instruments of production, including the great
railways, shipping, machinery, etc., which men have to use to create
wealth, concentrated in the, hands of a class. Those machines and
instruments have come into existence since the Middle Ages and they
have pushed in between the landlords and the people. They came in the
first instance as an opposition to the landlord; capital appears in
every instance in the Middle Ages from the period of individual
production as the enemy of the landlord. It is the enemy of the
landlord to-day, and what Mr George is practically proposing and
advocating on this platform is the monopoly of the capitalist by
competition against the monopoly of the landlord by rent. (Hear,
hear.)
What we as Social Democrats desire to bring about is co-operation in
production and in distribution. We would accept all those points
wherein Mr George agrees with us, but we say that at the present time
the system of competition is falling by its own weight. Competition
has been tried and found a failure in every department, and its
bankruptcy has been proclaimed to the world. (Hear, hear and "No,
no.") The question is will Social Democracy benefit the people? I
am glad the word "people" has been used because I maintain
that it will benefit not merely the working classes but the
capitalists and middle classes also, whose interest Mr George, it
appears to me, is so anxious to defend, and who form, I think, the
majority of the audience here to-night. Even they would be largely
benefited, not by the Single Tax which leaves them still competing
with one another for the wealth produced by the workers; but by the
establishment of Social Democracy, and by the amount of necessary
labour growing less and less with every improvement in machinery,
which would leave them abundant time to cultivate their mental
faculties and develop their physical powers without that hideous
feeling that every advance they make is made at the expense of their
fellow creatures. (Loud applause.)
There is a moral side to this which I cannot deal with fully
to-night. Take the case of the large body of shopkeepers in this city
who fancy they gain by this competition. Are not our large stores
crushing out the small shopkeepers? Are not they as a matter of fact
at the present moment injuring the middle classes? ("Yes")
Take the case of the stockbrokers and the great masses of barristers,
doctors and others in a similar positions how far are they allowed the
full outlet for their faculties by being kept with their noses to the
grindstone all their lives for the sake of bread and butter? The
middle classes of this country do not realise how much their faculties
would be enlarged and their scope of usefulness increased if this
miserable system of competition by which they can only gain at
somebody else's expense were removed. (Loud cheers.) This system which
Social Democrats are anxious to see is inevitable, and is coming as we
are talking; it has gained ground enormously in England in the five
years since I debated in this hall with Mr Charles Bradlaugh, and has
gone on from strength to strength until at the present time it is the
most rapidly growing movement in the country. We are told that it will
mean the stunting of men's faculties. Are not the faculties of most
people stunted by competition and the mere desire to beat and crush
down their fellows?
We constantly see men possessed of the finest faculties, who might be
of immense benefit to their own fellows in every possible way,
overworked and crushed down by this very competition which Mr George
champions. Mr George says that we stunt the individual faculties by
organising the social forces. These social forces have been and are
being organised to-day, but they are being organised for the benefit
of the capitalist class. The Post Office is organised by the State
to-day, but for whose benefit? Not for the benefit of those who work
in it most certainly, for they work under competition many hours a day
for practically subsistence wages. (Hear, hear.) The same applies to
the railways Mr George asks us, "Will you buy them?" Does he
intend to buy rent? (Laughter.) Oh no you may confiscate rent. (Hear;
hear.) It is moral to take the rent of the landlord without buying it,
but do not touch the capitalist. (Laughter and applause.) I say, to
use a vulgar phrase, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for
the gander." (Hear; hear.) If Mr George says it is immoral to
nationalise or socialise the instruments of production, then I say it
is equally immoral to touch the rent which goes to the landlord. ("No,
no" and cheers.) The one is the result of historical causes just
as much as the other; the one has grown up out of the past just as
much as the other; the one means the expropriation of labour just as
much as the other (Applause.)
We say that from the moral point of view our duty should be to take
for the benefit of all that which comes from the labour of all. (Hear,
hear.) Again, to return to this objection about crushing down
individuality; how could individuality be crush down when if the
labour of all were properly applied none need work more than two hours
a day, and thus all could have leisure and the opportunity for the
full development of their faculties? So far from stunting the powers
of man it would give opportunities for the physical and mental
development of' mankind which can be obtained in no other way.
(Applause.) It is said that to replace competition by co-operation
would be to stop progress. Nothing of the kind (Cheers.) Why, at the
present time capitalism stops progress. Electricity might replace
steam in many cases if it were not for capitalism barring the way.
Along the canals to-day you can see women doing work which could be
done by steam or electricity were it not for this infamous
competition. Competition may produce the vessels which Mr George terms
the greyhounds of the sea, and which transfer us so swiftly across the
Atlantic; but the inside of those vessels s never seen by millions of
our people. I wonder he should have put it forward here as an instance
of the progress of mankind, when the very competition that produces
the City of Paris, New York, Umbria, and other vessels of the kind has
produced degradation in our cities and the miserable condition of the
men in stokeholes of those very vessels. Let Mr George stand up for
the stokers who run these greyhounds on the Atlantic, and whose
miserable condition will not be relieved by opening to them the land
which you are going to rack-rent up to its full value. (Cheers.) I am
glad the discussion has been narrowed to the operation of all which we
champion. I am glad that on this platform we have the flag of Single
Tax put up as against the red flag of Social Democracy, which I am
here to champion to-night. I can hear the measured tramp of the
millions of people as they march behind our flag to the glorious
victory which will emancipate the whole human race from the bondage of
capitalism. (Enthusiastic cheers.)
Mr George:
I will reply as well as I can seriatim to what Mr Hyndman has
advanced. As to Mr Arnold Toynbee's figures, I have never thought it
incumbent on me to analyse any figures. I am not disposed to attach
much importance to figures, and especially to the figures of professed
statisticians. (Hear, hear.) I can find figures and figures until I
cannot rest to prove conclusively to the satisfaction of those who get
them up that everybody is all right, and that there is nothing
whatever to complain of; that wages are good and have been steadily
advancing for a long tine. Whether the rent is large or small is not
of importance to the principle. I would take rent - always meaning by
rent economic rent - for the community because it belongs to the
community, (Cheers.) I would not abolish it; I would exact it from
anyone who used land wherever it was used; because that is the only
way in which all can be put upon an equality. (Hear, hear.)
If you are to leave to the man who gets possession of a piece of land
in the centre of London the whole rent you give him an enormous
advantage over the man who for his purposes, to get his land, has to
go to some out of the way district or up to the Highlands of Scotland.
(Hear, hear.) The importance that we attribute to this taking of rent
is that it is not merely taking that much from a source that will not
restrict industry, will not oppress labour, will not hamper
production; but it will make mere landownership utterly valueless.
(Applause.) By taking the rent we make it unprofitable to hold land in
expectation of future increase in its value. (Cheers.) We make it
impossible to extort from the worker a monopoly rent (Hear, hear.) We
make it impossible for great landowners to hold vast tracts of land -
which their fellow citizens would be glad to make fruitful - in
idleness or for purposes of pleasure. (Loud cheers.)
Tax land values up to the full and what would you have? The land that
has no value, that is to say, the land that two men do not want to use
could be had by labour not merely without price, but without tax. The
selling value of land would be destroyed, and all that the user of
land need pay would be a price amounting to the special advantage that
he had above his fellows by the possession and use of a particular
piece of land. Mr Hyndman asks who is to supply the tools. That is a
striking illustration of how the Socialists simply take the old dicta
of such political economists as Ricardo; McCulloch, and so on. Just as
they used to say that labour can not be employed unless there is
capital to employ it, and capital must therefore restrict the
employment of labour because labour cannot support itself save upon
the proceeds of past labour, which is capital, so do the Socialists
now say that labour cannot go on land and make any use of it without
capital. (Hear, hear.) That is not the fact in the first place.
(Cheers.)
Who was the capitalist who supplied the first man with tools? (Hear,
hear and laughter.) And to-day what would be the effect of opening the
land to labour? Among the unemployed there are very many men who could
get some amount of capital; there is hardly any man who can see an
opportunity of making a profitable use of his powers w o cannot obtain
some capital. (Interruption and cries of "Order.") How is
labour to get the land? How has labour got the land when it was much
further off? Irish labourers have gone some 3,000 miles across the
sea; and then in many cases 1,000 miles further west, by saving or by
borrowing some member of the family has gone across, and their
earnings have constituted an emigration fund for the rest of the
family. That great emigration has been going on all these years, not
by capital supplied by the Government, but by capital earned by the
strong arm of labour. (Applause.)
The whole development of the United States, the whole development of
every new country, proves the fallacy of this assertion that labour
cannot employ itself without capital, and proves the fallacy of the
assertion, that the opening of land to labour would do nothing to
improve wages. Go into a new country where land is free; go into a
country where the price of land is not yet high, and there, you will
find no such thing as an unemployed man; there you will find no such
thing as a man begging for employment as though it were a boon. (Hear,
hear.) What has the deterioration in the condition of our farms been
caused by? Not, as Mr Hyndman says, by any exploiting power of
capital, but by the monopolisation of land, and by the taxes levied on
industry (Hear, hear.) What do these great farms come from? They come
from the great railroad grants. (Hear, hear.) They come from the
system permitted under the land-laws of the United States, under which
single individuals have taken hundreds of thousands of acres. And from
the same cause comes the mortgage on the farms.
Wherever the farmer goes he finds the speculator ahead of him, he
finds the land already taken up, and he must either start with capital
and pay a large sum for the purpose of getting virgin soil to
cultivate, or he must mortgage his labour for years. That is what he
does. (Hear; hear.) The real cause is in the high purchase price, of
his land, and that is why times have been getting harder in the United
States. Then I am asked, how can a man using a spade compete with this
great machinery of the 5,000 acre farm? This, at least, he can do; he
can make a living and a good living, too; and when men can make a good
living themselves they will not work for anything less than that for
any capitalist. (Loud cheers.) There is in capital no power to oppress
labour; capital is not the employer of labour; labour is the employer
of capital. (Applause.) That is the natural order; labour came before
capital could be; it is labour produces capital; there is no particle
of capital that can properly be styled capital that labour has not
been exerted to produce. (Hear, hear.)
Give labour land; let it get it on equal terms; secure to the
labourer the reward of his exertions, and the distinction between the
labourer and the capitalist will pass away. With the increase in the
wages of labour if there be great organizations of capital they must
necessarily be co-operative organizations in which labour shall have
its full share and its full right. (Applause.) Mr Hyndman speaks of
the history of the development of England. What is the history of the
development of England? It is the gradual suppression of the common
rights - the gradual making of private property out of what was
originally recognised as common property. (Hear, hear.) It is the
gradual taking of the land of England from the whole people, and
making the class originally tenants landowners. (Hear; hear.) The long
series of usurpations was finally consummated by a no-rent manifesto,
by which the landowning class live off the rents they had agreed to
pay for the use of land, and put them in indirect taxes upon labour.
(Cheers.)
What we propose to do is to go back the same way. What we single tax
men would do would be to go back to the old system, to bring it back
in a way adapted to our time; to recognise, not half-heartedly, but
fully, that all men are equally entitled to the use of the land, and
its correlative that each man is absolutely entitled to that which his
labour produces. (Applause.) Now we have heard a good deal to-night,
as we always do whenever our Socialist friends talk, a great deal
about nationalising all the instruments of production, a great deal
about making capital the property of the State, and about organising
labour by the State; but I have not heard to-night, and I have yet to
hear, of any practical steps in this direction. (Hear, hear.) How do
they propose to begin, and what will be involved? Here let me say, to
interrupt for one moment, that I have never made any proposition to
confiscate the railways. What I propose to take is the rent of land
for the use of the community; what I propose is to take for the
community are all valuable franchises; but I would take nothing that
is the product of labour for the use of the community without paying
its owner its full value. Now, to take the instruments of production
will involve a good deal. (Hear, hear.) The instruments of production
comprise not merely the railways, not merely the ships of the
steamship lines; they go down to the axe, the spade, and the other
tools of the individual workman, and to the stock of the storekeeper.
Are you going to take all that? ("Yes.") It is a big job.
(Laughter and applause.)
Has it ever happened in the history of the world that the men that
had nothing took everything from the possessing classes? Never. And
when it is taken, what do you propose to do with it? ("Use it.")
To use it under Governmental directions, and to have a Government
official or a board at the head of every vocation; lawyers, doctors -
I suppose no lawyers would be needed - down to milkmen, costermongers,
and bootblacks. Now what does that mean? We are told it is all to be
managed in the interest of the community - the whole people - but is
that the history of such organization? Does not organization always
mean a concentration of power in the hands of a few? Do not you men
who belong, as I have belonged, to a political organization, know that
always the tendency is to the management by a few? Is it not always
true that when things are left to the vote of a large number of people
that a few designing men always have the advantage? Here is an example
of Government directing production: under the plea of directing
production, of controlling exchange, you had a system called a
protective tariff - we in the States have it still. The wisdom of the
people freely expressed by means of manhood suffrage, endeavouring to
so direct industry as to benefit the whole people, and what has been
the result? A system of utter robbery and spoliation; a system that
has given to men such as Andrew Carnegie incomes of five millions of
dollars per year, and has driven our ships off the high seas; a system
that has been used by every corrupt influence to add to the wealth of
men who are willing to spend their money for corrupt purposes. (Hear,
hear.) Think of what would be the result if you were to apply that
system to all industry. (Applause.)
You speak about organising an industrial army; the organising of an
army always means tyranny; it means that a man must be put in the
ranks as a machine, and must obey arbitrary authority. Do you think
that there is less tyranny because men claim to act in the name and by
the authority of the people than without it? Not at all. Do you think
that there is any virtue in any party, or any men, or any system of
Government attempting to do things for the benefit of the whole? ("No.")
Why, we know that in the United States there can be a tyranny of
majorities just as bad as the tyranny of despotism. My time is up.
(Loud applause.)
Mr Hyndman:
I maintain that Mr George has not dealt with my argument at all. I
contended that the system he is proposing - namely, taxing land up to
its full economic rent, would not give the people access to the soil.
(Hear, hear.) I contended that the difficulty of their getting upon
the land would be very bit as great then as it is now, because they
would have to pay to the state in taxation the full amount they now
have to pay to the landlord. I pointed out further that even if they
got on the land the competition which would be brought to bear against
them by the heavier guns than their own, by better tools in the shape
of steam ploughs and the like, would gradually but surely grind them
down to the condition in which they are to-day. Not one of these
points has Mr George answered. (Applause.)
Mr George says that in the new countries where land was obtainable
unemployed men were not to be found. I can only say this: that I have
seen the streets of Sydney crowded unemployed men with lots of land
all around them, and I have seen identically the same thing in
Melbourne, and identically the same thing in San Francisco. (Hear,
hear.)
How is it that Mr George does not deal with the impoverishment of
those farmers - not those who have to get on the land, but those who
are already on the land, and who are beaten by the competition of
cheaper production on a larger scale. Mr George has not shown Mr
Chairman, nor any man or woman in this hall, that if the economic rent
of the land of England, be it 60 millions or 150 millions, were taken
and applied to the reduction of taxation that the people of this
country would be benefited in any particular. I say he has never met
my argument in any shape, way, or description, that the capitalist
class would pocket every sixpence of the difference, and that the
people of this country would not be benefited at all. I would ask you
to mark this, that Mr George both begins and ends this debate, so that
he cannot say he has not had a fair opportunity.
I have only a few minutes in which to answer him and cannot go into
the question as fully as I should like to do; but I will try to make
the best of the short time at my disposal. Mr George says that I have
put before this meeting tonight no practical proposals. I will, deal
very rapidly with what we do propose. We propose, as I said before to
organise labour on the soil. We are just as much in favour of the
taking away of private property in land as Mr George is, and in a much
more effectual way. We propose to organise labour on the land in
co-operative farms by means of the communes and county Councils under
the control of the whole industrial community. Again he says, "How
do you propose to act?" Well by way of palliatives to the
existing evils we would shorten the hours of labour by law in every
employment where it is possible to do so. On the railways and tramways
and in all Government departments eight hours might be made the normal
working day, which would give the people more leisure to combine,
think, and understand how it is they are expropriated at the present
time.
We would have free education and free meals in our schools in order
that every child might be educated - not merely instructed in the
three R's, but educated - and in order that their physical condition
might rise to the level of their education. (Loud applause.) Then as
the proper housing of the people is of the greatest importance, we
would have healthy buildings erected by the communes, municipalities
and county councils to be let at rents to cover the cost of
construction and maintenance alone. (Cheers.)
Further, we would take this unemployed labour of the working classes
and organise it under State and communal effort, and when I speak of
the State I do not mean the State governed by the landlords and
capitalists, but the State organised under the control of the whole
industrial community. (Hear, hear.) Then as regards the railways we
say they should belong to the community - the organised industrial
community as a whole. Mr: George says, "How are you, going to
take the rent?"' Well, friends and fellow citizens, by vote if
possible, by force if necessary. (Loud cheers.) And precisely the same
thing applies to rent. How are you going to take the rent? By vote if
possible, by force if necessary. (Applause.) The railways are now
organised by directors on behalf of corporations which have neither
souls to be damned nor bodies to be kicked; we maintain that they
should be organised under the whole community, which will then be a
democratic industrial community, no longer dominated and dictated to,
but able to turn out the present directors who trample upon them and
to put in those whom they can control. (Cheers.) Then there are the
mines which at this present moment might just as well be organised by
the workers, they themselves electing their own directors. (Hear,
hear.)
The same thing applies to the factories. To-day you have the most
complete organization of the workers in production and the most
terrible anarchy in exchange. We see boot manufacturers throwing out
as many boots as they possibly can on the market for the sake of
profit - not for use. (Hear, hear.) Then when they have in this way
brought about a glut in the market, they throw the men out of
employment, and you have men and women going without boots because,
forsooth, there are too many boots! (Loud applause.) There are men
going hatless because there are too many hats; and coatless because
there are too many coats. (Cheers.)
We would restore by, the co-operation of all, in a State not
dominated and dictated to by the capitalist and the landlord, but in
an organised industrial community, order in place of this chaos which
at the present moment is prevailing all over the civilised world.
(Cheers.) This is what we would do, and the things we are proposing
the men who come into office are forced to carry out. My master in,
political-economy at Cambridge, the late Henry Fawcett, one of tho
most vigorous champions of individualism and non-interference, was
obliged as an administrator to kick himself downstairs as a political
economist. When he became Postmaster General, he was forced to
introduce the control of the State in connection with the Savings
Banks and in other similar measures. Why? Because it is necessary for
the State to come in to organise this miserable system of monopoly
which the capitalists have engendered; they themselves are obliged to
bring in laws to limit their own robbery.
We contend that if it is necessary for the capitalists it it still
more necessary for the labourers. (Hear, hear.) I have very little
time but I have tried to present before you what it is that we would
bring about. We would bring about a real beneficial co-operation in
place of the hideous devil-take-the-hindmost competition which now
exists. (Applause.) We would substitute for the system where some men
work 16 or 17 hours a day, one where all men working but two hours a
day wealth shall become, as Robert Owen said, as plentiful as water. I
have enough patriotism left to hope that this country will take the
lead in this great movement. (Loud applause.) Here is the centre of
capitalism; here the commercial world has its nexus. (Hear, hear.)
Tyler and Ball and Cade and Ket and More and Vane and Blake and
Harrison, those are the names of the men of the past who will be the
heroes of the future. (Cheers.) The Chartists, too, and Bronterre
O'Brien and Ernest Jones and the rest, with the great Robert Owen.
(Renewed cheers.) If I look to the other side of the Atlantic also, I
see that the men who broke down negro slavery, Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, and their friends, were but a despised few, who nobly
struggled and fought on until at last their day of triumph came as
ours is surely coming. (Enthusiastic cheers.) We have a greater cause
than theirs: we are fighting for the emancipation of the workers
throughout the whole civilised world. (Applause.) I do beseech you to
read our literature, study our principles, and then endeavour to help
us to benefit the whole people, not by the single tax, but by
establishing permanently a beneficent co-operation which shall be an
untold blessing to generations to come. (Loud and long-continued
applause.)
Mr George:
Mr Hyndman says that in San Francisco as in other new countries he
has seen men looking vainly for work though there is unemployed land
there. That is true; but he never saw a man looking vainly for work
where the land was not fenced in and monopolised. (Applause.).
What the Single Tax would do would be to break down that monopoly; to
make it impossible for any man to hold valuable land without putting
it into use; compel those who are now holding land unemployed to use
it themselves or sell out to someone else who would. (Hear, hear.) Mr
Hyndman says that these industrial depressions come from too much
production - ("No") - that because too many boots are made
men go shoeless. That is not so. There cannot be too much production
until all wants are satisfied. (Loud applause.) It is because the men
who would like to wear boots are unable to apply their labour in
producing anything that they can exchange for the boots. (Hear, hear.)
The cause of industrial depressions is not too much production, but
it is the speculative increase in the value of land, and throwing idle
men back to compete with each other for work. (Applause.) That is the
cause. (Hear, hear.) We have talked here for a little to-night, but
for one I feel that we shall have accomplished nothing unless in so
far as we induce people to think. What I ask you all to do is think
about these things (Hear, hear.)
What I would like Mr Hyndman to do is to seriously set himself to
thinking - (loud laughter) - how this organization of labour, this
appropriation by the State of all capital, is to be brought about. I
asked the question, and he replies by saying they propose to take the
railways. We Single Tax men also propose to take the railways.
What I want to know is about the other things. How are all trades
going to be organised? You are going to begin with one here and there,
you are going to end competition a little at a time·- a piece
here and a piece there. Wherever you end competition you give some
special privilege. Monopoly in what does it consist? In the abolition
of competition. What are the things of which you complain in
Government? The absence of competition.
Your House of Lords is not opposed to competition; it is fenced in by
monopoly (Loud applause.) So wherever you find a special privilege,
there you find it a special privilege because competition is excluded.
What was the essence of slavery to which Mr·Hyndman has alluded?
The prohibition of competition; so no one else could employ the slave
save his owner - the slave was not free to compete with owner. (Hear,
hear.)
If you men seriously think of these things you will see that the
Social Democratic Federation vaguely proposes, if it were possible to
carry it out, would inevitably result in the worst system of slavery.
(Loud cries of "No; no," and "Order") Simply
imagine a state of things in which no one could work save under State
control, in which no one could display any energy save under the
control of a board of officials, and ask yourselves who this board of
officials are likely to be. Socialism begins at the wrong end; it
pre-supposes pure government; its dream is simply of a benevolent
tyranny ("No, no.")
Mr Hyndman is proud of England, so, too I am proud of English blood.
I stand to-night claiming membership in the great Anglo-Saxon race,
and I ask you men of England why is it that our speech in the coming
century must be to the world what the tongue of ancient Rome was to
the old world? Why is it that America is ours? Why is it that great
nations of the English speech are growing up under the Southern Cross?
Why is it that we have succeeded in colonising where Germany and
France have failed? I will tell you; it is because the English people
have trusted very little to Government, and it is because, more than
any other people they have allowed free scope to individuality
(Cheers.) French colonies, Spanish colonies, and the German colonies
are all far more deftly arranged so far as organization and direction
are concerned; but English colonies have had but the individuality of
the Anglo-Saxon race, and that is the reason why the Anglo-Saxon race
is the dominant race of the future. (Applause.)
I ask you to follow your traditions, to more and more remember that
this German Socialism is nothing but an attempt to establish tyranny -
("Oh!") - in the interests of the people. ("No, no.")
The interests of the people are always in freedom. (Applause.) Let the
people have their natural rights; let them stand on an equal plane
with regard to the opportunities of nature, and then they will have a
full, fair, and free field. (Cheers.) Then if one is more active, more
industrious, more enterprising than another, then in God's name let
them go ahead. The notion of reducing everyone to one level is a
preposterous notion; it is the notion of ancient Egypt, not of the
19th century. This is the watchword: freedom, freedom, always freedom.
To each the fullest opportunity to develop his own powers; to all that
which belongs to all - that which God above has given to all equally -
that which the community, as distinguished from the individual,
produces. That is the doctrine of the Single Tax. (Great applause.)
Mr Hyndman:
I rise to propose a vote of thanks to our chairman to-night. I do so
with the very sincerest pleasure, and feeling I am honoured in so
doing. Twenty five years ago when the working classes of England were
making some sort of effort to obtain freedom in the form of trade
unions and other combinations for their benefit, our chairman, in the
face of the most hideous obloquy, stood forward with his fellows in
the face of the World to champion their cause. (Cheers.) Again, in
1871, when the whole of the capitalist press of Europe howled down the
Commune of Paris, when the men who had striven for the enfranchisement
of the workers landed in this country in rags and in misery, Edward
Spencer Beesly, in spite of all the obloquy, vilification and abuse of
the press, came forward and lent a helping hand to them. (Loud
cheers.) I wish in these days of political tricksters, turncoats,
office seekers, and wind-bags, we had more men like our chairman
(Cheers.) Again, when the Liberal Party went in for miserable coercion
in Ireland, and he is a Liberal, stood out against it. (Applause.) I
have the greatest pleasure in proposing a vote of thanks to our
chairman, who has conducted this meeting so fairly and held the
balance so well between us.
Mr George:
I most heartily second that vote of thanks.
The resolution was put to the meeting and carried unanimously amidst
loud cheers.
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