CHAPTER X.

When it is decided by our authorities that a new city shall be built to meet the requirements of increasing numbers, and to establish that convenient co-operation in branches of industry and trade which close association affords, its location is left entirely to the judgment of a board of government officers, of sanitary and civil engineering skill. If, as is frequently the case, the proposed site is already occupied by one or more tenants in rural pursuits, they are scrupulously indemnified in all losses which result from their dispossession.

I wish to impress upon you here, that a tenant, under our government, has even greater security of possession than your land owners. The prevailing sense of justice, and a widespread interest, have established the right of a renter to hold and enjoy, against all competition, his allotment during his life. He has also the right, under our custom, to convey its possession by will; and it is more generally the case on our planet than on yours, that a piece of land is held for generations in the same family.[Pg 184] Our government exercises some rights of interference, to the end that the size of a farm shall conform, as near as possible, to such dimensions as to employ no great excess of labor over that capable of being supplied by the family of the occupant. In a general way, the tenant enjoys the same rights of ownership which are held by your individual holders in fee, except that he cannot convey title, and does not take to himself any emolument arising from increased value. His rent is simply an equivalent to your tax, with the very important difference, that its amount depends entirely on the season’s productiveness, and is never a burden.

Once decided upon, the proposed city becomes the subject of universal interest. Its plans are submitted and approved, just as your proposals for a single edifice. All its parts must conform with each other; the choice of its location chiefly depends upon drainage and water supply, and it possesses these advantages in the highest perfection. Every house must be erected in conformity with rules. Work is commenced by the erection of public buildings in the center, and the laying of drain, water, heat and electric conduits through its newly surveyed streets. People come to it, as they come to your new cities, for the[Pg 185] purpose of gain in trade and industry, and locate themselves as they choose under a fixed and uniform land rental. They erect edifices as you do, varying them as they like in their internal structure, but strictly conforming in their outer elevations to the style adopted by our architectural commission, which supervises also the material employed, and the safety and durability of the work. Any disreputable or depraved quarter is of course impossible under this plan; nor could such an encouragement and propagation of crime exist in one of our cities, as they do in yours, even had we the class of tenants to people them. It must be charged among the evils of your landlordism, that it not only promotes vice through its tendency to impoverish your masses, but is ready at all times to multiply it, by affording quarters for convenient association.

The spectacle of our city in course of construction is very different from yours. The government has set aside, what may be computed in your way as millions of money for the institution of various works designed for the health and comfort of the new population, and people are arriving in thousands from all quarters to do the work. Every one of them is impressed with that feeling and[Pg 186] interest which can only arise from ownership, and there is not a single one of them who is not performing some of the work. No one of them has a hope for honor and wealth by getting a monopoly of the land. No rich man comes with his accumulations to get a perpetual lien upon the industries that are just now springing up, and to hold for himself and his descendants the privilege of exacting daily for all time a larger share of the earnings of labor than your slaveholders derive from their human chattels. All choose to work, because it is both honorable and profitable to do so, and also because it is a duty, the conscious fulfillment of which is attended with a feeling of happiness.

The systematic and regular use of the voluntary muscles, without excessive fatigue, has not only an important influence on health, but assists as well to develop perfect and well rounded brains, out of which can only come those evenly balanced minds which create, out of the power of intelligence, the blessings of human progress; whence only come those level headed men, who are distinguished among yourselves as being never wholly the product of learning. It is an axiom with us, that he who does not produce has no right to consume, and this doctrine[Pg 187] has been so carried out in our society that physical inertia, no matter how much attended with wealth, is exceedingly rare. As a consequence, affluence with us is not beset with the terrible penalties of ill health. The muscular body in all conditions of life is made to act with the brain and nerves.

We shall suppose, now, our city has reached a period of its growth equal in time to your decade. Its grand temple is not quite completed. Its streets stretch away in the distance, none of them narrower than a hundred of your feet, and some of them more than twice as wide, to accommodate the airships and the larger warehouses. The lines of uniform house fronts, relieved on the street corners by elevated towers, reach out sufficiently far into the gradually changing suburbs to give a hint of the long and beautiful perspectives that are to come. From the center outwards there are reserved, at intervals of about a half mile, spaces corresponding with the area of two blocks, which make a circular belt around the whole. These are cultivated and embellished in the highest style of gardening and landscape art. Here are located our public baths, statues, monuments, conservatories, and arenas for athletic sports. These pleasure grounds, so[Pg 188] convenient and accessible, diversify our city life with a taste and flavor of the country. Our city grows in a solid expansion. There are no straggling suburbs, like yours. Blocks are erected together, and always in continuation of the appropriated space adjoining them. The intercourse and demeanor of our population are, as you may expect, unlike yours. The general air of serenity and contentment, the uniform politeness, and the absence of degradation, with its frequent unpleasant and disgraceful episodes, mark the difference between your city population and ours.

It concerns us most, however, to make a comparison of our wealth producing agencies, and the channels of their distribution, and for this purpose we shall take our metropolis as it stands in its maturity. It contains, now, like your city of advanced growth, about three hundred thousand inhabitants. Its land rentals have been subjected to constant modification, and are in some places very much higher than they were at first. In certain localities, where trade has concentrated, the public fund has been increased by a considerable advance of rent to store keepers, but there is no exorbitant demand of rent for such favored places as there is with you. The purpose[Pg 189] of rent with us being only to meet the expenses of government, its total is limited; and consequently, while in the mercantile and trade districts, where wealth and capital are most heavily engaged, it has been materially advanced, a corresponding reduction has taken place in the residence portions. The direct and immediate effect, therefore, of an appreciation of land value, is to reduce living expenses among the masses by curtailing their rents. In the absence of any monopoly of private ownership, there is no case, even in the most concentrated places, where rent forms anywhere near so large a proportion of business expense as with you. By your land ownership methods, landlords have an access to both pockets of the tenant. Out of one they take to the limit of their greed whatever sum they choose for the privilege of business quarters, or a dwelling place, and from the other a tithe on everything consumed by the enhanced cost of its distribution.

As our material wants and needs are very much like yours, it is not hard to make a comparative estimate of the savings of industry. We produce more wealth than you in a given time, even with our shorter daily periods of work, because, with few exceptions, all are engaged in[Pg 190] the business of production. By this increased productiveness every consumer is richer. He is able by a smaller amount of labor to procure a greater amount of the objects of desire. Our production is more perfect than yours, by the use of more perfect machinery. Our division of labor is more complete than yours. Our workmen having abundant leisure for intellectual development, all the practical advantages of knowledge and science are immediately brought into effect. By avoiding your great waste of capital by excessive government expenditures, it is constantly so abundant with us that its proportion to labor makes labor remunerative.

We have now assumed for the purpose of comparison that the two cities, one of Mars and one of the Earth, have each three hundred thousand inhabitants; and that, allowing for women and children not engaged in productive industry, one hundred thousand of each city is actively engaged in industrial pursuits. As the general prosperity of each city depends upon the earnings of this one hundred thousand, and the accumulations in capital and wealth upon the amount saved by these productive classes, let us make a relative estimate of the opportunities each possess in individual savings. Having no common[Pg 191] medium of exchange upon which to base our estimate, let us take the value of a day’s labor for that purpose. The income of a city is derived from two sources, the aggregate wages of its inhabitants, and the combined profits of its capital. The latter, however, being entirely derived from consumers, is largely contributed to by the inhabitants themselves. And for the reason that all imported products, as well as those exported, bear the profits of capital in their rates of sale, we may safely say that an amount very nearly equal to the whole profits of capital of a city is paid by the consumers within its limits as capital profits. The chief source of your city’s yearly income then is about thirty-one million days’ labor. Out of this you must pay for expenses, under your system, two million days’ labor for government taxes, fifteen million days’ labor for ground rent, two million days’ labor for water, two million days’ labor for insurance, and with the balance of ten million days’ labor you must pay the cost of food, raiment, fuel, the portion of rent estimated in buildings, together with the various incidentals of furniture and house lights. You will observe that all these expenses except the first are largely loaded with the profits of capital, so that with the income and expense as[Pg 192] set forth you may be in a progressive condition, as that term is defined by you. That is to say, your capital may increase, and your wealth may be very greatly augmented. The enormous proportion of your earnings carried away by rent, although drawn very largely from your business districts, is contributed equally by the whole in the increased cost of all products consumed. Of your one hundred thousand producers, it is safe to say that twenty thousand of them have capital investments. Among these is divided the whole of the surplus of the city’s earnings. The eighty thousand engaged in the business of directly creating wealth are doomed, under your cruel system, to sweat and toil from sun to sun without accumulations. You accept this condition of things as inevitable, and your economists contend that the real or natural remuneration of labor is the bare means of subsistence. We have seen the unrighteous origin of this prodigious fund, which absorbs one third of the earnings of labor at least: let us examine its perpetual effects upon the interests of those who toil.

Looking upon your civilization, we find in its modern aspects a wonderful increase in all the appliances and conditions which accumulate wealth. Among these may be[Pg 193] specified a better and more economical division of labor, the discoveries of science, labor saving inventions, and altogether as a result, greatly increased productiveness.

Added to these contributions of knowledge and science in the interest of the working class, you have, during the last century, experienced the most remarkable acquisition in favor of labor that was ever known upon your planet. I allude to the accession of new and fertile lands, over which the boundaries of civilization have been extended, and out of which, by the new methods and contrivances both of husbandry and transportation, the food supplies of the Earth have been made to flow in a steady stream toward the districts of their consumption. These immense advantages could not fail to have, in some degree, a beneficent effect upon your labor class. Inasmuch as your workmen of to-day are enabled to obtain more of the comforts of life than formerly, real wages may be said to have considerably advanced. Their share, however, of the wealth produced is as small a portion as formerly. By the modern necessities which custom has rendered difficult to avoid, they have become larger consumers, which in itself has enabled your capital, with its undue advantages, to increase its store out of all[Pg 194] proportion to a fair division of the wealth produced. But the greater and cheaper food supply, and the abundant capital of your recent times, while serving to neutralize the depressing effect of increase of population in the labor ranks, and to institute a condition of general prosperity in trade and mercantile pursuits, has at the same time offered to all your monopolists of land the opportunity to extort, under the pressure of competition, the whole surplus of the earnings of your workmen. Precisely the same happy conditions which have brought a modicum of prosperity to them have created a richer field for your monopolists, and especially for those of them who by their ownership of city land can exact from the extended demands of business, and a rapidly multiplying population, an unfair portion of the wealth produced. The unlimited privilege of appropriating to themselves the utmost share of the profits of industry, gives a speculative value to the holdings of your landlords, and serves in turn to furnish them the excuse of a parallel in their charges for rent to the current rate of interest on money. If industry can be forced to make over to them a third of its earnings now, the possibilities of the future shadow golden dreams, which promise no less to them than the[Pg 195] power of your imaginary Midas—dreams which encourage an easier wealth-making than was possessed by your olden barons, who by force of arms were enabled to hold,—what your modern law and custom equally allows,—the privilege of sapping the industry of millions of busy hands of all else but a bare sustenance and a shelter from the elements.

That rent does not to any great extent enter into the cost of your agricultural products, is due to the abundance of new land coming constantly under cultivation, and to that equalizing of situations which your railroads promote. An increase in the demand for food, and the promise of an advance in its price, brings under cultivation lands of lesser fertility or those more remote from your markets. The monopoly power of agricultural land ownership is thereby effectually destroyed. So long as these favorable conditions exist, the cost of your food staples will be governed by the value alone of the labor employed. The profits of capital, therefore, take no part in them until they leave the hands of the producer. There is no value in your cultivated lands of the lesser fertility, except in the opportunity they afford for labor to exchange its services for money. This class of land[Pg 196] fixes the price of and cheapens the food of the Earth. The value of all lands from these upwards in degrees of fertility is estimated by the amount of produce derived from a given amount of labor, and except in a few favorite situations there is as yet no monopoly value in your cultivated lands. To this, more than anything else, is due the comparative cheapness of your food, and the steady and unrestricted increase of your population. In time, however, for reasons to obvious to require mention, rent must enter into the original element of cost among your food staples, just as it now so largely takes a part in the cost of their distribution. The fullest manifestation of the evils of your private ownership system will then take place. The signs of what may occur at that rapidly approaching critical period are to be seen in the completely merciless character of your wealth holders, who, in the face of a divine intelligence, which has so charitably provided an even abundance to all, attempt to subvert the natural laws of trade by unfair combinations, known among you as trusts and syndicates, wherein the common welfare is made a sacrifice to their determined and unscrupulous love of gain.

You have perhaps not fully considered how it has come[Pg 197] to pass that your wealth is so generally without the best feelings and impulses of humanity. The desire to accumulate which pervades all classes can accomplish nothing in the ranks of labor, except for those who possess it in an inordinate degree. The anxiety for gain must be so intense as to overwhelm the wish for gratifications within reach, and to produce a fortitude of restraint which denies every dispensable want and pleasure. Is is only the few who have this power of abstinence that can escape a life of drudgery. The ranks of capital and wealth are largely recruited from this body of abstainers. Under the depressing effects of your monopolistic condition, ordinary prudence and moderate abstemiousness are not, as a rule, capable of laying the foundation of wealth. You have, consequently, by a natural process of selection, the ranks of your moneyed classes filled up, for the most part, by the most aggressively mercenary and acquisitive of your race; while the better part of humanity, where the self-sacrificing and generous impulses most prevail, must pay the penalty of its virtues in unrelieved dependence. Your successful moneyed class, coming in time to that place of power which its wealth procures for it, shapes and directs your legislation; which, as you might[Pg 198] expect, instead of being devoted, as it should be, chiefly to the support of measures to equalize and ameliorate the conditions of all classes, works the machinery for government for its own selfish ends, making easy and comfortable paths for those schemes which multiply its wealth.

While the wish to accumulate is acknowledged to be the fountain head of all material progress, its accomplishment, under our system, is mostly the reward of those qualities of the mind which are not safe lessons for common acceptance. Your examples of material success are not good studies, if charity and the true public spirit are to be considered as worthy of being enlarged by precept.