Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/131

 putable right to demand service equally effective under accumulating pressure as that which we rendered. If we sell our effort for one dollar, and receive a dollar which, owing to altered conditions, will only give the right to demand half the effort in a year’s time, what satisfaction or inducement is offered by the denomination of the coin?

If in disgust we ceased all extra-effort, exchange of goods might still go on busily for a few years; but when the surplus was consumed, we would be back at the commencement of economic history, with this essential difference: there would be no possibility of making an exodus in search of free land.

The hungry landlord would then look over the fence at the hungry laborer; and, if they were not yet in a mood to negotiate, the landlord would probably go back to his search for volunteer potatoes, where the parings had been thrown out in his days of affluence. Realizing that it was also advisable to get some new planting done, with a reborn instinct for a reserve, he would request the laborer to help. The laborer would ask what the remuneration was to be, and the landlord, having no reserve to draw on, would be compelled to get down to fundamentals. He would in any case, to keep his helper going, have to share a part of his precious volunteer potatoes; but the laborer, also awakened to the need of a reserve, would ask more. If the landlord promised a later day’s work to the laborer, he would be laughed at, having never enjoyed any reputation as a physical worker. In the end, the only adequate protection the landlord could offer would be a lien on a portion of the land. The promise of future potatoes would not be acceptable since the sophisticated laborer faces a double dilemma. If the crop fails, he does not get his pay; if it is unduly heavy, a stipulated quantity of potatoes will not enable him to command an equal amount of service from his fellows when he needs it. He realizes that the one thing which will neither expand nor contract with disconcerting consequences is his neighbor’s acre and with a fractional lien on this as security, provided taxes are prepaid by the owner, he can always look for his labor to be redeemed. With such security he is not only willing to work, but to work long and hard, so that the joint