People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1892 — THE LAND QUESTION. [ARTICLE]

THE LAND QUESTION.

Can the Populist* I.wad De Back to the Feet of Mount Sinai? From the September number of the Springfield (Ma) People’s Forum I clip the following. how ob hktbb: It you want to secure a home, or bar one or more farms as an Investment, now Is the Uhm to strike! Very soon Uncle Bum Call hough Hch enough) will have so more farms to give away, or subject to entry. In a very short time there will not be a tract of government land, of value for a house, to be had. Whew that time comes, you will simply have to buy at holder's option, and most likely at a greatly increased price. Buy while you may at reduced prices, and do not wait until all the bargains are picked up. We offer, eta, eta , „ The foregoing paragraph, so far as it goes, is a truthful representation of the present conditions and a fair statement of the workings of a system of land tenure the results of whieht in England, the English government is endeavoring to neutralise by loaning to tenant farmers money at a nominal rate of interest with which to purchase small holdings of land, the sale of which has to be made compulsory on the part of the small percentage of the population which csnstitutes the land owners of the kingdom of Great Britain. It is a very safe affirmation to make that the system of land tenure now in vogue, pushed to its ultimate conclusions, will take for those who-own the land the total product of the toil of the entire nation except a ‘‘bare subsistence” for the workers, and for capital, the lowest rate of interest that will induce its investment in productive enterprises. And we cannot flatter ourselves that here in the United, States such a condition is a remote contingency. Not only is there now ao government land that is fit for settlement by agriculturists, but we have already a larger number of homeless people than England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales combined, with a European nation or two thrown in.

Some time ago a writer in the North American Review made the startling statement that the United States is the largest tenant farmer nation in the world. Here is a list of some of the states as given by the above writer: New York, 39,873; Pennsylvania, 45,835; Maryland, 13,537; Virginia, 34,898; North Carolina, 53,728; Georgia, 63,175; West Virginia, 13,000; Ohio, 48,283; Indiana, 40,050; Illinois, 80,244; Michigan, 15,411; lowa, 45,174; Missouri, 58,802; Nebraska, 11,492; Kentucky, 44,027; Kansas, 22,051; Tennessee, 57,296; Mississippi, 41,558; Arkansas, 36,130; Texas, 55,54(1. Here are twenty-four of our leading states with more tenant farmers than England, Ireland, Scotland and Walea This, it will be observed, is but a partial list of farm tenants only, and does not include the multitude of tenants in our cities and towns. It can easily be understood that in this class are embraced the vast majority of our urban population, when it is stated that in New York city only 13.000 of the 1,700,000 inhabitants own any real estate, while in Chicago per cent of the population own all the real estate.

According to Horace Greeley, this is slavery. In a speech made in’ 1845, he said: “Whenever the ownership of land is so engrossed by a small part of the community that the far larger number are compelled to pay whatever the few may see fit to exact for the privilege of occupying and cultivating the earth, there is something very like slavery.” This condition of servitude, under our present system, must supervene so soon as the supply of free land fails, when those who are unable to buy land of those who claim the ownership of man’s heritage, must pay to those who thus monopolize God’s free gift just whatever they choose to exact for the privilege of living upon the earth. Moreover, the chains of servitude grow more and more galling, and the lapse into slavery more complete as the pressure of population grows more intense. The increase in the selling value of land is not, strictly speaking, rent, because such increase attaches as well to land which yields rent as to land which does not. Rent is all such wealth as is possible to be produced, or acquired, upon any certain location, which is above or tn addition to such a quantity of such wealth, as the producer or acquirer thereof is willing to accept for his services in producing or acquiring such wealth; This, it will be no ticed, has the same ultimate and produces the same results as the “iron law of wages.” Owing to the fact that labor has been displaced with laborsaving machinery, without a corresponding decrease in the hours of labor, to such an extent that there is an excess or surplusage of labor, the laborers compete with each other for employment, with the tendency that the regulation rate of wages shall become that sum which will provide for labor a “bare subsistence” of the meanest and poorest grade upon which any laborer is willing to try to subsist Even so with rent As the pressure of population becomes more intense and competition fora place to live becomes more bitter the standard of living is continuually lowered and rent claims an ever increasing share of the pittance received by labor under the operation of the iron law of wages. This, in its turn, has an apparent tendency to raise wages, by lowering interest and profit, so that in an advanced state of civilization (?) in a densely populated country, the land owners absorb the product of the whole community, except the minimum sum with which productive and distributive labor, employers and employed, can support itself in each individual’s respective class, or grade, of the several classes and grades into which labor has foolishly divided itself This means a minimum rate of profit and wages; while to capital is allowed the lowest rate of interest which will induce its investment, which is the reason why interest is always the lowest where land is worth the most money. Now a few figures to show the vast import and significance of this overshadowing question. It is estimated that the land values of the United States in 1890 approximated twenty billions of dollars, and that the average increase in the value of land is at least five per cent This meant an increase

in value fqr 1801 of one billion dollars, which vast sum was absolutely stolen from labor and is a sight draft which, if the laud is sold, must be paid in a lump out of theyear’s produets of labor, or if the land is not sold, and is not occupied by its owners, forms an addition of fifty million dollars to the annual item of rent which must be paid by the tenants of the nation. This assertion is based upon the customary predicate of five per cent of the Value of land a< the sum of economic rent And it must not bo forgotten that this is virtually eating a cake and having it too, because the five per cent, received as rent may be used, and yet five per cent in increased value will be added to the principal and interest (rent) realized upon it for the following year. It may be said to be ten per cent with five per cent of it compounded. This increased value is a curse rather than a benefit to all who themselves of their descendants expect to use and occupy land, and who are not in possession of a sufficient quantity of land toprovide homes for' a family for generations to come; Take, for instance, afarmer who buys land at 85 an acre upon starting out in life, and who, while raising four sons, sees land treblein value in the western country in which he lives.. With no better opportunities to make money, but on the contrary much poorer ones; with no more land than there was when their father was a boy, these four sons must each pay out three times as much money for a home as was paid by their father in his turn. If they each raise four boys to manhood w& have as factors the same amount of land as in the beginning and sixteen times the demand for it The result is easily foreseen and it is not a happy one. In the meanwhile there are conspiring causes which tend to force the small farmer who is a land owner to part with his holding and let his land go to swell the total acreage owned by the land monopolist who lives upon the rents he. receives Competing as he does with the cheap ryot labor of India and the peasants of Russia, the American farmer has absolutely no voice in affixing a price upon his products, while ft vicious 'monetary system, with exorbitant rates of interest, the demonetization of silver, mountains of taxation and rates of transportation which almost amount to confiscation, all conspire to make the cost of production equal or more than equal to the returns, and rob the farmer of the interest upon the money value of his farm. But as the land rises in value the taxes upon it increase, and the farmer is forced to sell that which he cannot afford to keep, and becomes ■ a tenant upon the land he once ownecl George 0. Ward.