The fertility per acre in the United States is varied, but President William C. Brown of the New York Central Lines has recorded this evidence of the abundance of Nature:

"In the year 1908 a friend of mine who some years ago bought 5,000 acres of land in New York state, raised 200 acres of corn, which yielded 50 bushels of shelled corn per ache; his potatoes averaged 350 ushels to the acre. This was the result, not of intensive farming, but of simple intelligent farming, and these crops were raised in the extreme northern part of the state, 12 miles from the Canadian line, at the northern end of Lake Champlain." 225

At this rate but little more than one million acres of land would be required to raise the entire potato crop of the United States. A crop which, in the time of the war retailed as high as ten cents a pound, $5.00 a bushel, $1,750,000,000 for the crop, presuming 350 millions of bushels for the 1917 crop. Nature blessing the United States with 1,800 million acres of land, the year's product of one million of these acres sufficing 100,000,000 people, but costing them $17.50 per capita, if they had to buy in bushel quantities or less, in large cities, and assuming-what is improbable that most of the crop was sold at the price the writer paid per pound for a time in New York City.

As to eggs, in 1913 it was brought out at the tariff hearings that the United States was at that time suffering under prices that now seem trifling:

The U. S. consumes 1,500 million dozen, or 18 billion, single, eggs per yr., valued at $281 million, or 19 cts a doz. in 1912; at this price the Bureau of Labor has given statistics to show that the price of eggs advanced 86 per cent from 1900 to 1912. 2756.

We have seen that John Stow in London, in the days of Henry VIII and of Queen Elizabeth procured milk for less than a cent a quart in London, in the summer time, and for a cent a quart in winter time. In Mich

acre, three quarts of raspberries and loganberries; on 1-1500 acre 4-5 quart of cranberries.

And were Nature given a half-chance to show her productivity, these pounds and pecks and quarts and bushels could be doubled or trebled per acre. Is it a wonder that Micah, prophet of the theocratic democracy, sang?

"Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

Neither shall they learn war any more.

But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid:

For the mouth of Yahweh of hosts hath spoken it.”

CHAPTER XV

"The Bounty of Providence May Become a Curse"

"Abundance is prejudicial to the interests of the producers. It has been objected that the bounty of Providence may become a curse to a country. .. As long as society is constituted as it now is, abundance will often be injurious to producers, and scarcity beneficial to them.”—DAVID RICARDO. 227

"A short crop sells for a greater aggregate price than an abundant crop. Human interests are not parallel with value, but in antagonism. Human weal, social welfare, is out of harmony with the current concept of wealth."-H. J. DAVENPORT. 228

WE shall now have opened to us the complete rea

son why the prevailing untheocratic expediency is permitted and encouraged to burden Christendom. Indeed the reason stands at the top of the page. Human interests and the will of the Almighty are not parallel with privilege.

David Ricardo, prince of the economists of expediency whose system of philosophy requires them to place self-interest in antagonism with justice, voluntarily supplies the information that he is petitioned

as a member of the English parliament to grant a law, so far as he is able, whereby the interests of the landed few may be benefitted at the expense of the many; and that in the petition "it has been objected that the bounty of Providence may become a curse to a country."

It is the year A. D. 1820 in England when the request comes up to Ricardo to help put through this oppressive favor of law. The landlords' complaint is, that "corn is sold too cheap." Change in the law is required so that the people may be forced to pay dearly for their daily bread. Ricardo hesitates. Let this be plain. It is not his pleasure to do this unfair thing. He is even ready to say that the price of corn is already abnormally high in England. The government's tax on corn is oppressive and violates political wisdom. The farmer will suffer because of the tax as well as the people. These are his words:

"It is to the present corn-law that much of the distress is to be attributed, and I hope to make it appear, that the occupation of a farmer will be exposed to continual hazard, and will be placed under peculiar disadvantages, as compared with all other occupations, while the system of restriction on the importation of foreign corn is continued, which have the effect of keeping the price of corn in this country habitually and considerably above the prices of other countries." 229

Quite the whole theory of government and tradeprofits, he must say, is involved in this matter of corn.

"Before I proceed, however, to do this, which is the main object that I have in view, I wish to notice some of the prevailing opinions which are daily advanced on the subject of the cause of the present distress; on the doctrine of remunerative price; on taxation; on currency, &c: after disposing these, we shall be better able to examine the important question of what ought to be the permanent regulations of this country, respecting the trade in corn, in order to afford the greatest security to the people, for a cheap and steady price, with an abundant supply of that essential article."

In a short while Ricardo will be writing to his friend Malthus those final words that mark the end of a great career,-"and now, my dear Malthus, I am done." It is therefore an earnest year with him. He wishes to say something about rent.

"The words Remunerative Price are meant to denote the price at which corn can be raised, paying all charges, including rent, and leaving the grower a fair profit on his capital . the rent which is now a charge on cultivating land which yields... 32 bushels is equal to the value of 17 bushels.”

...

This to show that the landlord was able to go more than "fifty-fifty" with his tenant, and that the price of wheat to the people was more than doubled by the landlord's right of toll on the bounty of Nature.

But the tenant-who is distressed by the low prices offered for his grain-has more than rent to struggle with to barely get on. Adam Smith had said to the tenants of England, as well as to all workers:

"Rent and profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders of people oppress the inferior one."

Ricardo, thereafter, has something to say on the fluctuating price of gold which plays the great mass of the people into the hands of the favored few who make the laws governing the currency.

Following this digression, he takes up the fact that it is to the interest of the landowner not to further an abundant crop.

"The aggregate value of an abundant crop will be always considerably less than the aggregate value of an average one; and the aggregate value of a very limited crop will be considerably greater than that of an average crop." The price of a quarter (8 bushels) of wheat, he proceeds to show from Tooke, the historical expert on prices, has run from 22 to 53 shillings through a term of years. There was more money from a half crop at 53 shillings than a full crop at 22 shillings; 15x53 equals 795 shillings, whereas 30x22 equals but 660 shililngs.

Professor Davenport, we have seen, emphasizes the

same point. This is a dictum of the profiteers of expediency, and it has been reduced to a formula by Professor Taussig, who describes its workings.

"Scarcity is the earmark of an economic good,-scarcity, that is, relatively to the demand."230

The demand for bread being a fixed quantity, not variable as the demand for an opera ticket, not to be put off for another year, as the need of a new coat may be put off; it follows that a scarcity of bread, if brought about for so much as one day may be made to cost humanity dear. There will be the same rush for a loaf of bread that there is for an opera ticket when a prima donna is to sing. Competition for the loaf will set the price soaring.

This is the first of seven laws that have been instituted, more or less ignorantly, but prompted in every instance by avarice, to cope with the inconvenience of Nature's abundance. We shall presently examine these laws, for they are at once the crowning glory and the shame of commercialism in human food. But Ricardo is now coming to the point on which he is petitioned to act as a legislator. He writes:

"No one has said that abundance is injurious to a country, but that it is frequently so to the producers of an abundant commodity. If what they raised was all destined for their own consumption, abundance could never be hurtful to them. . . . . If we lived in one of Mr. Owen's parallelograms, and enjoyed all our productions in common, then no one would suffer in consequence of abundance; but as long as society is constituted as it now is, abundance will often be injurious to producers, and scarcity beneficial to them."

Robert Owen's plan, long successfully pursued by the English Co-operative Society, and now advocated by the English Labor Party, successfully demonstrated that producers can be organized as consumers, their interest being mutual. Ricardo's philosophy forbade