Will Modern Civilizations Suffer
the Same Fate as the Roman Empire?
Alexander Hamilton
[Excerpts from an address delivered at the Henry
George Society of Victorai, British Columbia, 19 June, 1931. Reprinted
from Land and Freedom, July-August, 1931]
I have recently returned from a visit to Eugene, Oregon. I addressed
a meeting in the Congregational Church Forum there on the partial
application of Henry George's principles in British Columbia. I also
spoke in Portland and in Seattle, at the Commonwealth Club, the Lyel
Club, and to the Municipal League.
Eugene, the capital of Lane County, Ore., is a fine city of 20,000
people, situated in the upper Willamette Valley. Many of the streets
are paved, beautifully boulevarded and planted with shade trees. There
has been no snow all winter and flowers have been blooming gayly. The
chief industries of the neighborhood are farming, fruit growing and
lumbering. Being a university city and having some liberal churches
with forums, one can listen at any time to addresses on social,
psychological, scientific, economic, religious and kindred subjects.
Prices of commodities average much less than on the Canadian side of
the line, so that Eugene may be quite truly called a city of cheap
living and high thinking, and altogether a most desirable place in
which to live.
The Oregonians have an advantage over us in the matter of keeping
their politicians in order. They have a referendum law that works; we
have one that is unworkable. Eight per cent of the voters may demand a
referendum. Here we require 25 per cent. If their representatives
attempt to raise their own salaries or give undue privileges to
corporations or such like, the referendum can easily be invoked to
head them off, while we have to take that sort of thing lying down.
When direct legislation became law too many questions were "referred"
for settlement at each election and cluttered up the ballot, but the
measure is now considered well past the experimental stage.
I have referred to the fact that living is cheaper on the south side
of the international boundary. Protectionists, of course, claim that
this, like all other good things, is to be credited to the policy of
high tariff. It will be news to some people to hear that free trade is
the actual cause, but such is undoubtedly the case. It is true that
Americans have a very high tariff wall against the outside world, but
here is a world within itself. Forty-eight great commonwealths, many
of them large and prosperous enough to be classed as nations,
unlimited natural resources, variety of climate and products,
120,000,000 progressive, inventive and hustling people and
unrestricted reciprocity absolute free trade across all boundary
lines. Trade is free coming and free going.
The United States of America constitutes within herself the greatest
experiment in free trade the world has ever seen. I do not say they
would not benefit immensely by free trade with the outside world. Let
them adopt even a "revenue" policy and overnight almost her
flag would be seen on every sea and in every harbor on earth. What I
do say is that while so great a nation may rub along in spite of a
protective policy, the same policy practiced by such a country with
only a twelfth of the population would be quite suicidal.
All trade is at bottom barter the exchange of commodities for
commodities. Therefore, as Canada has unlimited commodities of a
limited variety to sell, her only trade policy is to remove
obstructions to the inflow of commodities. Added to other advantages
this would lower the cost of commodities and lessen the endless
outflowing tide of Canadians seeking enlarged opportunities and
cheaper living conditions in the United States.
It may be asked : If the United States grew and became great under
protection, why cannot Canada do likewise? The answer is that the
United States was great before her tariff wall was built so high as it
is today. Her tariff has only been high since Civil War times.
The greatest mistake made by both the United States and Canada was in
alienating most of their land and natural resources to a few
monopolists. Nothing would have been more disastrous. Even the
benefits of free trade like all other benefits, must ultimately be
absorbed by those who hold the key to nature's bounties the landlords.
The words of Henry George in his lecture on "Moses" still
fit as well as they did in the year 1884:
"Yet the great concern of Moses was with the duty
that lay plainly before him : the effort to lay the foundations of a
social state in which deep poverty and degrading want should be
unknown where men released from the meaner struggles that waste
human energy should have opportunity for intellectual and moral
development.
"Here stands out the greatness of the man. What was the wisdom
and stretch of forethought that in the desert sought to guard in
advance against the dangers of a settled state, let the present
speak.
"In the full blaze of the nineteenth century, when every child
in our schools may know as common truths things of which the
Egyptian sages never dreamed, when the earth has been mapped and the
stars have been weighed, when steam and electricity have been
pressed into service and science is wresting from nature secret
after secret it is but natural to look back upon the wisdom of three
thousand years ago as the man looks back upon the learning of the
child.
"And yet, for all this wonderful increase of knowledge, for
all this enormous gain of productive power, where is the country in
the civilized world in which today there is not want and suffering
where the masses are not condemned to toil that gives no leisure,
and all classes are not pursued by a greed of gain that makes life
an ignoble struggle to get and to keep. Three thousand years of
advance, and still the moan goes up 'They have made our lives bitter
with hard bondage, in mortar and brick, and in all manner of
service'! Three thousand years of advance! and the piteous voices of
little children are in the moan.
"We progress and we progress, we girdle continents with iron
roads and knit cities together with the mesh of telegraph wires,
each day brings some new invention, each year marks a fresh advance
the power of production increased and the avenues of exchange
cleared and broadened, yet the complaint of 'hard times' is louder
and louder; everywhere men are harassed by care and haunted by the
fear of want. With swift, steady strides and prodigious leaps the
power of human hands to satisfy human wants advances and advances,
is multiplied and multiplied. Yet the struggle for mere existence is
more and more intense and human labor is becoming the cheapest of
commodities Beside glutted warehouses human beings grow faint with
hunger and shiver with cold; under the shadow of churches festers
the vice that is born of want.
"Trace to their root the causes that are thus producing want
in the midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelligence,
aristocracy in democracy, weakness in strength -- that are giving to
our civilization a one-sided and unstable development, and you will
find it something which this Hebrew statesman three thousand years
ago perceived and guarded against. Moses saw that the real cause of
enslavement of the masses of Egypt was, what has everywhere produced
enslavement the possession by a class of the land upon which and
from which the whole people must live. He saw that to permit in land
the same unqualified ownership that by natural right attaches to
things produced by labor would be inevitably to separate the people
into the very rich and the very poor inevitably to enslave labor to
make the few masters of the many, no matter what the political
forms, to bring violence and degradation no matter what the
religion.
"And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman who
legislate not for the needs of a day, but for all the future, he
sought, in way suited to his times and conditions, to guard against
this error. Everywhere in the Mosaic institutions is the land
treated as the gift of the Creator to His common creatures, which no
one has the right to monopolize. Everywhere it is, not your estate
or your property, not the land which you bought or the land which
you conquered, but the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, the
land which the Lord lendeth thee. And the practical legislation, by
regulations to which he gave highest sanctions, he tried to guard
against the wrong that converted ancient civilizations into
despotisms the wrong that in after centuries ate out the heart of
Rome, that produced the imbruting serfdom in Poland and the gaunt
misery of Ireland."
In the forty-seven years since the above eloquent words were spoken
larger fortunes than ever have been rolled up; ground rent (the
community value) has enormously increased and is still pocketed by a
few, and unemployment has become chronic. Conditions are becoming more
intolerable and menacing. The cause being fundamentals no superficial
remedy can avail. The axe must be laid the root of the tree.
It is startling to note the similarity between Rome, her decline and
the world in its present plight. She always had her unemployment
problem, the dole and miles of tables to feed the starving. It is
plain that a system based on injustice cannot endure. We must avoid
Rome's fatal error or take the consequences. Public values must be
appropriated for public purposes, and privately produced values be
sacredly left to the producer.
Civilizations have risen and fallen -- fallen, no doubt because of
the uneven distribution of wealth and power, selfishness on the one
hand and ignorance on the other. History tells us that "land
monopoly ruined Rome," and it is clear and plain to those who are
capable of ordinary observation that the same evil is rapidly ruining
Anglo- Saxon civilization. Men in the mass, locked out from natural
opportunities, invariably become as helpless chattel slaves.
Science tells us that for the next million years or more this globe
may be doing duty in the same old orbit, human life and human comfort
and wellbeing, as far as natural law is concerned, be as possible as
ever.
The question is, Shall we go on treading in the foot- steps of Rome,
assuredly to meet Rome's fate, or shall we be wise enough to abolish
monopoly and privilege by discarding Rome's [quiritary] system of land
tenure and secure for countless future generations the right to
liberty, fair play and equal opportunity as envisioned by the
nineteenth century "Prophet of San Francisco"?
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