First Principles of the Land Question

Louis F. Post

[Reprinted from The Arena, Vol.9, 1893; pp. 758-768]

The land question is essentially a question of the rights of living men as against the exactions of one another. That is to say, it is a question of human equality - not equality of stature nor of weight nor of physical or mental strength, but equality before the laws that men make for the government of men. It is really the " man question " rather than the " land question." The latter designation is appropriately significant, however, for it points to the particular instrument by means of which in modern conditions men may be, and to a greater or less extent actually are, as effectually denied equal rights before the law as ever they were by cruder methods of mastership.

Men have natural desires to consume food by eating it, clothing by wearing it, and houses by living in them. Satisfying these desires as to quantity stimulates them -as to quality. Palatable food is demanded instead of mere provender, pleasant and handsome garments displace artless coverings, the rude shelter gives way to cheerful homes. And along with this desire for better food, clothing and shelter, comes an expanding desire for other things whose consumption may add to comfort, together with a growing demand for tools and machinery for making and transporting objects of consumption. Life itself depends upon the satisfaction, in some degree, of some of these desires; while civilized life depends upon satisfying to a considerable degree the wider range of desire.

But none of these desires can be satisfied by magical means. From first to last and all together they are satisfied, so far as they are satisfied at all, with things that owe their existence to the energies of men. Food, shelter and clothing, together with every other material comfort that men enjoy, let the quantity be little or much and the quality poor or good, are made for the consumption of men by the skill and industry of men. Men also make all the artificial materials of which every object of consumption is composed, together with the appliances, simple and complex, puny and massive, with which the powers of men in providing such objects are multiplied. Men do it all.

And they do it now. To no considerable extent do those of one generation provide for those of another the material things that the latter consume or otherwise use. Each present lives upon itself and not upon the past. If men ceased to make appliances, those for example that facilitate food making, the existing supply would soon be worn out, and food making could go on only at a disadvantage, the extent of which we of this era cannot conceive ; if no more artificial materials for food-making were produced, those for example of which bread is composed, the existing supply would soon be exhausted and bread-making would be at an end ; if production of food ceased the existing supply would soon be consumed, and then, no matter how great the accumulation of food-making materials and appliances, people would starve. It is the same with other articles of human consumption. Almost literally day by day, they are provided by living men for living men.

Now what are the rights of men in regard to obtaining and consuming such things? The answer of justice is obvious, simple and conclusive. Each man is entitled to an equal chance, so far as the legal rights or privileges of others are concerned, to make what he chooses, and without abatement to consume that identical thing, or such quantity, variety and quality of other things as the men who make them give him freely in trade for the whole or any part of what he makes ; and if from motives of public expediency some men are by law given exceptional chances to make and trade and consume, which place others at a disadvantage in those respects, the others are entitled to equitable compensation.

But in what fundamental ways can the law place men at a relative disadvantage in respect of making, trading and consuming? There are but two. One is by vesting in some persons titles to the ownership of others, and another is by vesting in some men titles to more useful land than others can obtain. All ways but these are secondary. The first is chattel slavery and calls for no exposition here ; but the true character and tendencies, the logical extreme and the far-reaching effects of the second are so obscured by custom and habits of thought, as was once the case with chattel slavery itself, that it must be dwelt upon even at the risk of seeming to amplify axioms.

Without land men can make nothing and trade nothing, neither artificial materials and appliances nor the finished objects to he consumed; for land includes all the natural materials and forces of the universe outside of man. It is his standing place, his natural workshop, the storehouse from which he draws everything required for ministering to the satisfaction of his material wants. To invest one person, therefore, with exclusive ownership of the land, or to recognize and enforce the claims of one man to such ownership - whether his claims originate in force, fraud or contract - would be equivalent to conferring upon him absolute power over other men.

No ownership by one person of any other thing (the literal ownership of other men as chattel slaves excepted) involves such perfect power. If one man who owned all existing money should withhold it from use, substitutes for money would be more extensively utilized, and manufacture and trade consumption would go on as before, while the value of the monopolist's money would shrink in his grasp. If one man who owned all existing machinery and buildings and other artificial implements and materials for making things for consumption, should withhold them from use, men would tap the earth and trade over it, and new supplies, more abundant in quantity and better in quality, would flow forth in all the directions of demand, while the monopolized artificial implements and materials would go to waste for want of men to use them. For people will not submit to much extortion, nor submit to any long, for the use of what they can replace ; and considering men as a whole there is no artificial thing which may be withheld from them that they cannot replace, at the sacrifice, at the worst, of but a little time, provided they are free and their access to the various kinds of land they require be not obstructed. This very fact is the most perfect security against the least extortion in free conditions, for he who would become an extortioner is restrained by fear of ultimate loss.

But by no sacrifice can land be replaced. If one man who owned all the land withheld it from use he could impose his own terms upon other men. Without making anything himself, he could demand and acquire all money, all machinery, all buildings, all artificial tools and materials for making objects of consumption, and all objects of consumption, save enough to maintain the men that he saw fit to hire, and not alone the existing supply of those things, but the future product as well.

If one man owned all the land, other men, except with his permission and upon his terms, could lawfully make nothing and trade nothing. If they made anything without his permission he might lawfully take it from them, not merely in part but to the uttermost. Were manna to fall from heaven for their relief it would all belong to him; they could have no share save by his gracious charity. If it pleased him to evict them from his premises they could not find even a standing place nor so much as breathing space in the habitable universe. The birth of a child, should he choose so to regard it, would constitute a trespass. While his legal right was respected or enforced, all other men would be subject to his mercy; by denying to them the use of his land he could condemn them to death by a self-executing sentence.

Nor would he need, by denying the use of land to his fellow- men, thereby to deprive himself of any object of consumption that man can make. His power over the lives of men, his power to limit their subsistence to bare animal necessaries, to drive them "far from the haunts of men" and keep them in lonely exile, would make it seem a privilege to work for him or his favored servants under any circumstances at any living wages, and an inestimable boon to be allowed to serve in his august presence for the leavings of his table and the cast-off garments of his wardrobe. For mere permission to live upon his land and satisfy their simplest wants in the rudest way, those to whom he accorded that privilege would supply him, both as to quantity, and quality, with all the desirable things within their power to draw forth from the earth, which he might demand of them for himself, his favorites, and his personal retainers in army, navy, church and college, his serfs thanking him most gratefully the while for " giving them work." They would also submit to any other conditions that he might, impose. Though the law guaranteed them freedom of worship, they would worship as he commanded ; though it secured them freedom of speech and equal suffrage, they would speak under his censorship and vote at his dictation. And if some of their number, more spirited than the rest, rose in armed rebellion against his blasphemous title, the great majority would stand ready to march in his regiments and to cheer his victory. Owning the land, he would own all living men.

And in respect to this power it would make no difference whether exclusive ownership of all land were vested in one man or in many, provided the owners were few enough to combine and agree among themselves, and should actually do so. It is not until the number of land owners becomes so large as to make unity of decision and action impracticable, or until for any other reason they cease to act together as one man, that a difference may be distinguished ; and then the difference is one of degree, not of principle. The same virtual ownership of man by man is involved, though the power can no longer be arbitrarily wielded to the extreme. It is then regulated by the value of land in the market, being weak when the value of land relatively to its usefulness is low, and strong when the value of land relatively to its usefulness is high. But just as land rises in value relatively to its usefulness does ownership of the earth by multitudes approach that extreme, the possibility of which is so obvious when ownership by a single individual is considered, where absolute ownership of land includes absolute ownership of men.

Nor shall we find any difference in principle when ownership extends only over the lands that lie within the boundaries of civilization. The difference is still only one of degree. If all civilized localities were owned by one individual, though the owner could not condemn other men to death by evicting them from his property, since there would still be land to which they might resort for a living, he could condemn them to exile by denying them the use of land within the limits of civilization. And if such localities were owned by many individuals, too many for an effective combination, the competition of the landless for permission to live in civilized surroundings would tend to raise the value of land within civilized limits relatively to its usefulness, until the value of even the poorest would be so great as to leave to the ordinary producer less than enough to live upon. This would force him to produce more, to go into exile, to become a criminal on either a small and contemptible or a large and respectable scale, or to starve amidst the squalor of civilized slums. If he produced more, competition for land would go on until the value of land relatively to its usefulness encroached upon the greater product, and this again and again while his powers of increasing production lasted. If large numbers emigrated to uncivilized places, as they most probably would, the same conditions would set in with the development of civilization there. The land as it became scarce and grew scarcer would rise in value relatively to its usefulness as a civilized workshop and abiding place, and in the course of time the landless in the new country would be in the same plight as those in the old.

And when civilization had conquered the world, the whole earth would be owned by some of its inhabitants, and no part of it, not even the worst, would be available to landless men except for a price. Then, with increasing population and continuing improvement (the twin causes, in the last analysis, of expanding demand for land) values would go on rising relatively to the usefulness of the land until land would be a luxury that only the very rich might presume to own, and concentration of ownership would have set in. Those who were not rich could not afford to buy land, and if they happened to own any a high price would tempt them to sell.

It is not intended to imply by the preceding observations that the demand for land is limited to demand for immediate use. If it were so limited land would not rise in value out of proportion to its usefulness; because just as soon as any land exhibited a tendency to rise in value relatively to its usefulness, demand for it would be weakened by the greater relative usefulness of poorer land. But choice land if used yields unearned revenues to its owners, which generates a supplementary demand - a demand for land that is not now choice, but which with advance of general demand promises to become choice. This supplementary demand, which would be by far the greatest of all demands for land, would of course make it abnormally scarce in the market and thus cause it to rise abnormally in value, a phenomenon that would persist with demand for land until none remained out of ownership. Then, though plenty of all kinds of land were unused, none could be had except upon payment of more than its natural worth as determined by the scarcity of that in actual use.

Here the ownership of the earth by many, besides being identical in principle, would approximate in degree the conditions of ownership by a single individual. Men would suffer and die for want of things they could make if other men did not stand between them and the materials they required, and the landless masses would be slaves to a few landed proprietors, who in turn would yield to the will of the strongest among them. Nothing could stop this but occasional spasms of non-production, such as we call "hard times," and these could stop it only for brief periods.

As a matter of logical speculation the result may be calculated with more than the ease and all of the certainty, except as to time, of an astronomical prediction. But it is not merely a logical speculation. The development of inequality before the law, which is involved in the principle of land ownership, may be observed in actual experience to-day. The extension of the area of demand for land, the intensification of demand, the consequent rise in land values, and the concurrent reduction of politically free men to states of dependence and subserviency that in extreme cases, by no means few, seem little if any less deplorable than literal enslavement, are the most notable general phases of industrial advance. They are manifested in greater or less degree in every growing village, in every progressive city, in every promising section of country, and as one comprehensive class of phenomena in the civilized world at large. The whole earth is rapidly coming into the ownership of some of its inhabitants, from whom others must get the land they need, or, what is the same thing, must in diminished wages buy opportunities to work from such as already have land or who by some means succeed in getting it. And an increasing value is attaching to land as a whole, a value far out of proportion to its use; that is to say, a much higher value than the scarcity of land relatively to the actual use of land would bring about.

The effect that might be logically foretold is thus actually produced in high degree in our own time and country. Now and here we may see evidence that owners of land are forbidding its use. Not whimsically, as a single owner might, but greedily; yet with similar death-threatening and enslaving effects. That is the meaning of so many valuable but vacant lots in villages, towns and cities, of so many valuable but unopened mines, of so much fertile and valuable but unused agricultural land. That men need these various kinds of unused land is sufficiently attested. While people go beyond the outskirts of villages, towns and cities for homes, while miners famish for lack of work, while farmers resort to sterile places and distant regions for their farms, and farm hands wander helplessly about between seasons unable to find employment with others which they could soon supply to themselves if the land were available, and while people who are able and willing to make what farmers and miners want, suffer the world over from scant agricultural and mineral supplies, it cannot be fairly urged that the reason land is unused is because it is not wanted.

The owners of all kinds of land forbid its use except upon terms that are more onerous than the difficulties and comparative unprofitableness of resorting to much poorer lands. This, by limiting the activities of business and lessening opportunities for employment, lowers the scale of comforts that men in general might otherwise enjoy, and in increasing degree tends to a denial of the equal right to live. Hence we have a world-wide struggle for opportunities to work, a struggle more like a stampede of animals from a burning barn than the orderly competition of self-respecting and neighborly men to satisfy their normal desires from the boundless supplies of nature's storehouse; and rather than die, rather even than live wholly outside the pale of civilization, many men beg for opportunities to do the drudgery of slaves for a slave's compensation - a bare rude living. This alternative already stares scores of thousands in the face. We need not wait for extreme phases of land ownership to behold its on slaving effects. In lower but by no means minor degree those r'fetts may even now be observed. Already we see in the .ievelopment of our competitive land owning system a close approximation to the conditions that obviously belong to the ownership of the earth by a single individual or combination.

And long before that approximation is reached, even while land ownership is in the infancy of its development, we may observe its interference with the relative rights of men in regard to producing and consuming the things that men desire and for which they work. Each man is entitled to an equal chance, so far as the legal rights and privileges of others are concerned, to make what he chooses, and without abatement to consume what he makes or what others freely give him in exchange. But from the moment that value attaches to land, land users as a class are compelled to refrain from consuming part of what they make, and to allow land owners as a class to consume it in their stead, the only consideration being the "permission" to use the earth that land owners accord to land users, which would not be necessary but for the usurpation of land ownership. And from the moment when land begins to be abnormally scarce by reason of appropriation without use, its abnormal value operates not merely to compel land users to refrain in the interest of land owners from consuming part of what they make, but also to enable land owners as a class actually to prohibit land users from making what they choose.

If these considerations are sound, land ownership is essentially incompatible with equality of legal rights. And if, as few will venture to dispute, men are entitled to equality before the laws made for the government of men, it follows that land ownership is a social crime and should be abolished. But no sooner is this conclusion reached than the problem of "vested rights" in land confronts us. If land ownership were abolished, so the plea runs, land owners would be justly entitled to compensation.

"Confiscation!" is the slogan of those who make this plea. But in the nature of the case society must confiscate, whether it abolishes land ownership or not ; and if it abolish land ownership, whether it awards compensation or not. That this is true a brief consideration will show. To abolish land ownership without compensation is to confiscate a legal right which some men have to appropriate property that morally belongs to other men ; for the essence of land ownership is its power of misappropriating a portion of the earnings of land users. On the other hand, not to abolish land ownership is to confirm the legal right of land owners to confiscate property which morally belongs to others. And to compensate land owners for abolishing their legal right, what is that but confiscation? For whence would the compensation come? and to whom would it go? Taken by force of law, it would come from those who earn it by their labor and therefore have a moral title, and be given to those who in that connection earn nothing and at best could have but a legal title.

Now, when a proposition to abolish a legal right of property is assailed as unjust, the appeal is to the forum of morals. In the forum of morals, then, when as in this case a legal right and a moral right conflict, which shall stand? There is but one honest answer. The legal right gives way to the moral right. Upon this principle the case of the land owner must be thrown out of the court into which he brings it by his plea of "confiscation."

And if it be urged that land owners or their predecessors in interest bought their right from generations that have gone, then comes the question, conclusive in the forum of morals, Upon what principle of justice could any man now dead convey to some men now living the moral right to confiscate the earnings or any part of the earnings of any men now living? Whoever accepts the moral axiom that all men are in justice entitled to all the goods they earn, is precluded not only from defending landlordism, but also from demanding compensation for landlords as a condition of abolishing landlordism. From the fact that land owners as such earn nothing, it follows that all the goods they receive in their character of land owners - whether by way of rent or of purchase price or of compensation from the public for relinquishing ownership - are extorted from others, who to that extent are deprived of goods that they earn.

And if we descend from the higher plane of justice to the lower one of expediency, we shall reach the same conclusion as to the compensation of land owners upon the abolition of land ownership. Compensation would be inexpedient as well as unjust, because it would make government a great and unlimited buyer of land, which with the first announcement of the purpose would so enhance demand as enormously to increase land values, and thus intensify inequalities before the law and magnify the very evils and dangers that by the abolition of land ownership it is proposed to set aside.

But the abolition of land ownership does not involve the throwing open of all land to common use, nor the nationalization or municipalization of ownership. It not only answers the purpose, but it is best that private possession for use should be substituted for all kinds of land ownership. And this can be easily done without resorting to such inefficient and obstructive methods as " land limitation." Nature herself seems to have pointed the way. When land is privately possessed for use, as well as when it is owned outright, the land of each possessor has a value from zero upward, which is determined by the demands of men for the possession of land relatively to its scarcity, and is measured by differences in desirableness. Men will give a higher price for land that is more suitable to their uses than for that which is less suitable. If the possessors are allowed to profit by these differences, as under all systems of private ownership they are, not only to some extent may they live upon the labor of others by means of the superior lands in the possession of which they are secured, but the fact that this can be done generates an abnormal demand for land, not to use but to hold as a means of extorting products from those who may desire to use it either in the present or the future. As already explained, it is this that makes land scarce, paralyzes business, diminishes opportunities for employment, lowers wages, enslaves men, and generally brings about approximately such conditions as a solitary owner of the earth might establish at his own pleasure.

But if the possessors of land were not allowed to profit by its rent or value, if for example the rent or value of land were taken by the community for common use, no one could derive any benefit from the possession of land except the benefit of use - what he individually earned. Therefore the incentive to hold land out of use for higher prices would be gone, and possession of land would be possession for use and for nothing else. This would lower the value of land not needed for use, which would consequently be abandoned. The abandoned land, not merely that which was far away but also that which was alongside of land in use, would then be available at all times, and business would not stagnate nor opportunities to work fall off nor wages decline nor men beg for employment. Moreover, as the value of land relatively to the benefits that its possession confers is the same in the same market, a decline in the value of unused land would tend to lower the value of all other land. This would leave to every individual his full individual earnings, while taking for common purposes the value of the land in use.

It is true, as is sometimes objected, that what the community would so take would be part of the earnings of men; but it would not be part of individual earnings. As men work both individually and in common, so they earn both individually and in common. Individual earnings are measured by individual wages ; common earnings are measured by the rent of land. By taking the rent of land for public use, therefore, and taking nothing else, society, while appropriating common earnings for common uses, would leave individual earnings to those who morally owned them; it would take nothing that labor earns except what land owners now appropriate.

The statutory device by which this may be accomplished is simple and effective. No commission need be appointed arbitrarily to determine the annual value of land ; no auctioning of land year by year need be made. Let the form of land ownership continue. As Henry George observes in another connection, "Forms are nothing when substance has gone." Let land be bought and sold in the market as now, which would determine land values with greater certainty and fairness than could possibly be done by an arbitrary appraisement, while affording better security of tenure and less opportunity for favoritism than either arbitrary appraisement or an auctioning system. Then concentrate taxes upon the value of land so ascertained and abolish all other taxes, taxing men according to the value of the land they hold and not according to the value of the work they do.

Under such a system it would be so expensive to hold land out of use and so profitable to use it that land would come into the market in such quantities as to make its value so low that there would be no lack of opportunities for work while men hungered for what men are able to produce. If this tax did not take the whole annual value of land it would approximate it so closely that the substantial effects would be secured from the beginning, and when the principle was once recognized and established, the expense of making and maintaining better public improvements would soon leave but little surplus to the possessors, or, if they pleased to call themselves so, the "owners" of valuable land.

Such, in substance, are the first principles of the land question. Briefly restated by way of summary they are as follows : -

First, Man produces all that man consumes.

Second in order of statement, though equal in importance and concurrent in time, To produce and consume man must have the use of appropriate natural objects external to himself all of which objects are included in the term "land" Denied the use of all land, man cannot live even the life of an animal. Denied the use of land within the limits of civilization, he cannot live the life of a civilized man. And to the extent that he is denied the use of land, to that extent his ability to produce and consume is limited.

Third, Legal ownership of the land by some men interferes with its use by other men, and by enabling the former to derive an advantage from what by nature is common to all, makes men unequal in respect of their rights before the law. The one extreme of this inequality is the establishment of differences of income, due, not to different services, but to different legal rights as to the use of the earth. The other extreme is the enslavement by land owners of all other men.

Fourth, To restore equality of legal' rights, the value of land must be taken for public use. Then the prosperity of men would be determined by the service they render to others, and no longer by the privilege they enjoy of appropriating the value of superior land.

Finally, this involves no formal revolution. To take land values for public use requires no greater change than the abolition of all taxes save the single tax upon land owners in proportion to the value of their land regardless of its improvements.

To adopt this simple remedy would be to apply to public use approximately the full value of land, to make the mere ownership of land unprofitable, to remove all incentive to hold it for any other purpose than its best use, and, while lowering rent, to increase wages, make hard times impossible, and banish poverty and the fear of poverty.