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argument rests, but they deny, on the grounds already partly stated, that any distinction can be founded on them sufficiently clear and important to justify the conclusion drawn. But, supposing we assume it true that land is not the product of labor, and that capital is; it is not by any means true that the rent of land is not the product of labor, and that the interest on capital is. Nor is it true, as Land Nationalizers frequently seem to assume, that capital necessarily becomes the property of those whose labor produces it; whereas land is undeniably in many cases owned by persons who have got it in exchange for capital, which may, according to our premisses, have been produced by their own labor. Now since private ownership, whether of land or capital, simply means the right to draw and dispose of a revenue from the property, why should the landowner be forbidden to do that which is allowed to the capitalist, in a society in which land and capital are commercially equivalent? Virgin soil, without labor upon or about it, can yield no revenue, and all capital has been produced by labor working on land. The landlord receives the revenue which labor produces on his land in the form of food, clothing, books, pictures, yachts, racehorses, and command of industrial capital, in whatever proportions he thinks best. The ownership of land enables the landlord to take capital for nothing from the laborers as fast as their labor creates it, exactly as it enables him to squander idly other portions of its product in the manner that so scandalizes the land nationalizers. When his tenants improve their holdings by their own labor, the landlord, on the expiration of the lease, remorselessly appropriates the capital so created, by raising the rent. In the case of poor tenants holding farms from year to year in Ireland, the incessant stealing of capital by this method so outraged the moral sense of the community, that the legislature interfered to prevent it long before land nationalization was commonly talked of in this country. Yet land nationalizers seem to be prepared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although they will not hear of their claim to property in land. Capital serves as an instrument for robbing in a precisely identical manner. In England industrial capital is mainly created by wage workers-who get nothing for it but permission to create in addition enough subsistence to keep each other alive in a poor way. Its immediate appropriation by idle proprietors and shareholders, whose economic relation to the workers is exactly the same in principle as that of the landlords, goes on every day under our eyes. The landlord compels the worker to convert his land into a railway, his fen into a drained level, his barren seaside waste into a fashionable watering place, his mountain into a tunnel, his manor park into a suburb full of houses let on repairing leases; and lo! he has escaped the land nationalizers: his land is now become capital, and is sacred.

*

The position is so glaringly absurd, and the proposed attempt to discriminate between the capital value and the land value of estates

* See, for instance, the Irish Land Acts of 1870 and 1881.

is so futile, that it seems almost certain that the land nationalizers will go as far as the Socialists, as soon as they understand that the Socialists admit that labor has contributed to capital, and that labor gives some claim to ownership. The Socialists, however, must contend that only an insignificant part of our capital is now in the hands of those by whom the labor has been performed, or even of their descendants. How it was taken from them, none should know better than the land nationalizers.

It is scarcely necessary to enlarge on or illustrate the obvious truth that, whatever the origin of land and capital, the source of the revenues drawn from them is contemporary labor. The remainder of this Tract may still further impress the impossibility of maintaining any hard and fast lines between them, either as regards their characteristics and importance in developed societies, or the defensibility of their private ownership or the arguments for their nationalization.

"Capital."

To return from our digression: When we consider what is usually called capital, we are as much at a loss to disentangle it from land as we are to find land which does not partake of the attributes of capital.

For though capital is commonly defined as wealth produced by human labor, and destined, not for the immediate satisfaction of human wants, but for transformation into, or production of, the means of such satisfaction in the future; yet railways, docks, canals, mines, etc., which are classed among the instruments of production as capital, are really only somewhat elaborate modifications of land. The buildings and the plant with which they are worked are further removed from the form of land, but we lump the lot as capital. All farming improvements, all industrial buildings, all shops, all machinery, raw material, live and dead stock of every kind, are called capital. And just as there is a purely social element in the value of land, so are there purely social elements in the value of capital; and its value, in all its forms, depends upon its accessibility and fitness here and now, and not on the labor it has cost. The New River Company's Water Shares have their present enormous value, not because Sir Hugh Middleton's venture was costly, but because London has become great. The usefulness of fixed and unchangeable forms of capital increases and decreases through external causes, just as does that of land. If instruments of production must be classified, the best division of them is into immovables and movables; the annual value of buildings, railways, mines, quarries, waterworks, gasworks, durable fixed machinery, and many other forms of so-called capital, manifestly agreeing with that of land in fluctuating according to causes of which the effects are generalized in the "Law of Rent" of abstract economics.

Besides industrial capital, there is a considerable amount of what has been conveniently called "consumers' capital." Dwelling-houses, and all their domestic machinery and conveniences are as necessary for production as land and factories; for though the worker uses them in his character of consumer, they are necessary to maintain

him in efficiency for his work. All private stores of food and clothing, all forms of personal property, may likewise be classed as consumers' capital. It will, however, be evident that, in classing these as capital, the signification of that name is becoming very vague and indefinite.

Finally, we have such purely non-material and social kinds of capital as banking and credit organizations, inventions, and other devices for extending and intensifying our power over Nature; social forces of immense importance for the carrying on of wealth production, largely capable of social ownership, not entirely capable of private monopoly, but at present appropriated by some individuals more than by others.

What is the Estimated Value of our National Stock of the above-named form of Wealth.

In December, 1889, Sir Robert Giffen attempted to compute the capital value of realized property in the United Kingdom as it was in the year 1885.* The following table is reproduced from that furnished by him, the figures being corrected according to the official Returns of Income Tax Assessments for 1901-2. The estimate of the value of the capital is arrived at by taking what Sir R. Giffen considered a suitable number of years' purchase of the income :—

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*See The Growth of Capital, by Robert Giffen (London, Bell and Sons, 1889). Also Essays in Finance, 2 vols., by the same author.

Forty-sixth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue [Cd.—-1717], price 1s. 10d. The amount stated as annual farmers' profits appears to be excessive, as Sir R. Giffen overlooked the fact that the Income Tax Acts assume the net profits of agriculture (in England) to be equal to one-half the rent, not the whole as here given. The number of years' purchase of rural land may also be regarded as too high. On

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is so futile, that it seems almost certain that the land nationalizers will go as far as the Socialists, as soon as they understand that the Socialists admit that labor has contributed to capital, and that labor gives some claim to ownership. The Socialists, however, must contend that only an insignificant part of our capital is now in the hands of those by whom the labor has been performed, or even of their descendants. How it was taken from them, none should know better than the land nationalizers.

It is scarcely necessary to enlarge on or illustrate the obvious truth that, whatever the origin of land and capital, the source of the revenues drawn from them is contemporary labor. The remainder of this Tract may still further impress the impossibility of maintaining any hard and fast lines between them, either as regards their characteristics and importance in developed societies, or the defensibility of their private ownership or the arguments for their nationalization.

"Capital."

To return from our digression: When we consider what is usually called capital, we are as much at a loss to disentangle it from land as we are to find land which does not partake of the attributes of capital.

All

For though capital is commonly defined as wealth produced by human labor, and destined, not for the immediate satisfaction of human wants, but for transformation into, or production of, the means of such satisfaction in the future; yet railways, docks, canals, mines, etc., which are classed among the instruments of production as capital, are really only somewhat elaborate modifications of land. The buildings and the plant with which they are worked are further removed from the form of land, but we lump the lot as capital. farming improvements, all industrial buildings, all shops, all machinery, raw material, live and dead stock of every kind, are called capital. And just as there is a purely social element in the value of land, so are there purely social elements in the value of capital; and its value, in all its forms, depends upon its accessibility and fitness here and now, and not on the labor it has cost. The New River Company's Water Shares have their present enormous value, not because Sir Hugh Middleton's venture was costly, but because London has become great. The usefulness of fixed and unchangeable forms of capital increases and decreases through external causes, just as does that of land. If instruments of production must be classified, the best division of them is into immovables and movables; the annual value of buildings, railways, mines, quarries, waterworks, gasworks, durable fixed machinery, and many other forms of so-called capital, manifestly agreeing with that of land in fluctuating according to causes of which the effects are generalized in the "Law of Rent" of abstract economics.

Besides industrial capital, there is a considerable amount of what has been conveniently called "consumers' capital." Dwelling-houses, and all their domestic machinery and conveniences are as necessary for production as land and factories; for though the worker uses them in his character of consumer, they are necessary to maintain

him in efficiency for his work. All private stores of food and clothing, all forms of personal property, may likewise be classed as consumers' capital. It will, however, be evident that, in classing these as capital, the signification of that name is becoming very vague and indefinite.

Finally, we have such purely non-material and social kinds of capital as banking and credit organizations, inventions, and other devices for extending and intensifying our power over Nature; social forces of immense importance for the carrying on of wealth production, largely capable of social ownership, not entirely capable of private monopoly, but at present appropriated by some individuals more than by others.

What is the Estimated Value of our National Stock of the above-named form of Wealth.

In December, 1889, Sir Robert Giffen attempted to compute the capital value of realized property in the United Kingdom as it was in the year 1885.* The following table is reproduced from that furnished by him, the figures being corrected according to the official Returns of Income Tax Assessments for 1901-2.† The estimate of the value of the capital is arrived at by taking what Sir R. Giffen considered a suitable number of years' purchase of the income:

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*See The Growth of Capital, by Robert Giffen (London, Bell and Sons, 1889). Also Essays in Finance, 2 vols., by the same author.

Forty-sixth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue [Cd.-1717], price Is. 10d. The amount stated as annual farmers' profits appears to be excessive, as Sir R. Giffen overlooked the fact that the Income Tax Acts assume the net profits of agriculture (in England) to be equal to one-half the rent, not the whole as here given. The number of years' purchase of rural land may also be regarded as too high. On

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