there must be the mental attitude of oneness. Men must make a beacon of principles out of a bond-fire of their class estrangements, and feed the fire with the last scrap of class-consciousness, till the flame of the union mounts the skies. Then, and then only, will the world be drawn and the true cause won. Some whisper of this Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts seems to have given very admirably to his legislature as it convened in January, 1920, for the making of the laws of the Commonwealth. Thus an editorial of the Ohio State Journal, Columbus, January 13th, 1920, entitled, Clear Thinking in Massachusetts:

"We need to stop trying to be better than someone else and start doing something for someone else. Industry must be the instrument not of selfishness, but of service. Change not the law, but the attitude of the mind.'

"Such was the gospel of service, of Americanism he gave to the members of the legislature ready for work."

CHAPTER XIX

Future Solution of the Land Problem

"The land is not of man's creation; and for a person to appropriate to himself a mere gift of nature, not made by him in particular, but which belongs as much to all others until he took possession of it, is prima facie an injustice to all the rest.... No rights to the land should be recognized which do not act as a motive to the person who has power over it, to make it, or otherwise as useful to mankind, as possible. Anything beyond this exceeds the reason of the case, and is an injustice to the remainder of the community."-JOHN STUART MILL.

NEW thoughtful men will contest the point, that if

human society could find a way honestly and truly to make the land as useful as possible, this world would be a different place to live in.

In England a generation of thinkers have propounded ideas to this end. Interesting facts have come

to light as the matter has been thrashed out in Parliament. John Stuart Mill, whose poise has been commended by President Hadley of Yale University, has contributed the results of his scholarly research into the history of the ownership of land in England. Mill became a member of the Land Tenure Reform Association of England, and as such delivered a brief on The Right of Property in Land that has become one of the most valued of the papers of the foremost public men of the British Empire.

In this brief Mill was called upon to say:

"The rights of landed proprietors (in England) were in many cases legally limited by rights of common enjoyed by neighbouring inhabitants. These rights the landlords have been gradually absorbing; formerly, often by downright usurpation; latterly, by the machinery of private Acts of Parliament and the Enclosure Commissioners; and they are even now pusuing the same course, dividing among themselves every year thousands of acres which ought to be left open for the enjoyment or cultivated for the benefit of the people. While this process of absorption has been going on, a set of laws have been in force, made by the landlords, and intended to make sure that no land which once got within their grip should ever get out of it. The laws of land tenure have been contrived for the purpose of keeping together the largest possible landed possessions in the families which already hold land." 240.

It is in this connection that Mill voices the common sentiment of the enlightened portion of mankind:

"It is time that this mode of dealing with landed property, as if it existed for the power and dignity of the proprietary class and not for the general good, should henceforth cease....... We hold that all property in land is subject to the will of the State. Land-and by land I mean the whole material earth, underground as well as above-not having been made by man, but being the gift of nature to the whole race, could only be appropriated by the consent, either express or tacit, of society: and society remains the

interpreter of its own permission; with power to make conditions, with power to even to revoke its consent, on giving due compensation to the interests that it has allowed to grow up." 240-2.

Elsewhere this economist and statesman has writ

ten:

"The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only qualified property ought to exist. They have not held the balance fairly between human beings, but have heaped impediments upon some, to give advantages to others; they have purposely fostered inequalities, and prevented all from starting fair in the race. That all should indeed start on equal terms, is inconsistent with any law of property; but if as much pains as has been taken to aggravate the inequality of chances arising from the natural working of the principle, had been taken to temper that inequality by every means not subversive to the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had been to favor the diffusion, instead of the concentration of wealth, . . . . the principle of individual property would have been found to have no necessary connection with the physical and social evils which almost all Socialist writers assume to be inseparable from it." 282

He goes on to state the property right in its true nature:

"Private property, in every defense made of it, is supposed to mean, the guarantee to individuals, of the fruits of their own labor and abstinence. The guarantee to them of the fruits of the labor and abstinence of others, transmitted to them without any merit or exertion of their own, is not of the essence of the institution, but a mere incidental consequence, and when it reaches a certain height, does not promote, but conflicts with the ends which render private property legitimate."

He indicates the need of cleansing property from the false considerations that now work inequality and injustice:

"Private property, as an institution, did not owe its origin to any of those considerations of utility which plead for the maintenance of it when established. We may suppose a community, unhampered by any previous possession; a body of colonists, occupying for the first time an uninhabited country; bringing with them nothing but what belonged to them in common, and

having a clear field for the adoption of the institutions and polity which they judged most expedient; required, therefore, to choose whether they would conduct the work of production on the principle of individual property, or on some system of common ownership and collective agency. If private property were adopted, we must presume that it would be accompanied by none of the initial inequalities and injustices which obstruct the beneficial operation of the principle in old societies. Every full-grown man or woman, we must suppose, would be secured in the unfettered use and disposal of his or her mental faculties; and the instruments of production, the land and the tools, would be fairly divided among them, so that they would start, in respect to outward appliances, on equal terms."

Again in his brief, The Right of Property in Land, he lays his finger on the heart of the land-problem:

"Rights of property are of several kinds. There is the property which a person has in things that he himself has made. There is property in what has been freely given to one, during life or death, by the person who made it, or honestly came by it.

All these are rights to things which are the product of labour; and they all resolve themselves into the right of every person to do as he pleases with his own labour, and with the produce of earnings of his labour."

"The land is not of man's creation; and for a person to appropriate to himself a mere gift of nature, not made by him in particular, but which belongs as much to all others until he took possession of it, is prima facie an injustice to all the rest. Even if he did not obtain it by usurpation, but by just distribution; even if, at the first foundation of a settlement, the land was equitably parcelled out among all the settlers—which has sometimes been the case there is an apparent wrong to posterity, or at least to all those subsequently born who do not inherit a share. To make such an institution just it must be condusive to the general interest. in which this disinherited portion of the community has its part. The general verdict of civilized nations has hitherto been that this justification does exist. The private appropriation of land has been deemed beneficial to those who do not, as well as those who do obtain a share."

"The greatest stickler for the rights of property will hardly deny that if land, the gift of nature to us all, is allowed to be the private property of some of us, it is in order that it may be cultivated. Every defence of the institution of landed property that I have met with declares that to be the object. Why, then, should any land be appropriated that is not cultivated? Observe, by cultivated, I do not mean ploughed up. Pasturage is as necessary, in this country, even more necessary, than corn land; and woodland is necessary too. I do not war against parks."

"It cannot be said that landed property, as it exists in the United Kingdom, conforms to this condition. The legal rights of the landlord much exceed what is necessary to afford a motive to improvement. They do worse; they tend, in many ways, to obstruct, and do really obstruct, improvement.' There are rights of the landlords to coal, iron and other deposits which yield further rents, royalties and profits without exertion or improvement on the part of the landlords. This is a burden against the dispossesed classes."

In 1876, Henry Fawcett issued his Manual of Political Economy, in which he gives us to understand that the question of the nationalization of the land of England was then under swing.

"If however, the proposed policy of nationalization were carried out the state, it is argued, would become the proprietor, and would charge just such rents as would most promote the wellbeing of the community." p. 290.

Fawcett, as a member of Parliament, objected to the nationalization of the land on the ground that the annual interest on the loan required to buy up the land and the houses would amount to a billion dollars, whereas the rents amount to but about 750 million dollars, in 1876.

In America the page of history relating to the alienation of the land is not altogether fair and unblemished. The intelligent onwatcher of events has found it a sad record of the betrayal of the Republic. The history of the alienation is canvassed in King G. Gillette's Social Redemption, 283 from which we may give citations.

"Congress in particular is chargeable with the full and guilty knowledge of this colossal crime. We have seen how 200,000,000 acres of land, with fatuous generosity, bestowed by Congress upon the railway companies, an area as great as the combined areas of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina,-and how we are now to see 150,000,000 acres,-the equivalent of the aera of thirty states the size of Massachusetts-have been stolen and added to this stupendous total of alienated lands. Moreover,