Page:Melbourne Riots (Andrade, 1892).djvu/53

Rh Hole of Calcutta would have given all their worldly possessions to have had good pure air to breathe there, so that their lives could have been spared; and it would be just so with us, were the air monopolized; we would willingly pay the monopolists' own price for the use of the air, just as we now pay his price for the use of the land. But with our pioneers it is very different. The land with them is as free as the air with us. It costs nothing to use it, so no one has any incentive to monopolize it from another who also requires to use it, because he could get nothing from that other for the loan of it even if he wanted to. It is only because the land has become monopolized and transformed into a marketable commodity, that we try to secure more of it than we need. When it ceases to have that market value, and becomes valueless in a financial sense, we take good care not to have more than we can just use ourselves. The Bethel community, who owned their land in common, but used it individually, never had any dispute about the area each one should occupy. Each member, or his family, had their own little house, and there wasn't even a fence round it. You couldn't tell where one man's ground ended, and another man's commenced. If you did see a little enclosure here and there, you found it was one to keep the fowls in so that they wouldn't destroy the crops; or it was one to protect certain vegetable growths from different animals who roamed about and might destroy them; or for some similar reason. But there wasn't any fence to say which was my land and which was your's. If ever we see a fence round some land, we know it is a sort of public notice to say ‘This land’s mine’; but you see the land of our pioneers, like the land of the Bethel people, is nobody's, so they don't want any fence round it to say whose it is. And they would not quarrel over it, any more than they would need to fence it from each other. The Bethel people were happy, contented and prosperous; and although they had not the perfect social organization that might be desired, their system of using the land gave every satisfaction that could be desired, and showed to all who want to live a noble life, where there are no such things as landed proprietors and rack-rented tenants, that that life can only be attained when the land is as free as the air, and no one has the right to own any of it, but each one has the right to use just as much as he requires. Now that is the grand lesson that Communism has taught us—that the natural resources of nature should be absolutely free to all. That is the lesson to be learned from its successes. But we know that all experiments in communism have sooner or later failed; and we have to learn the reason of its failure. Communism did good when it secured the common use of natural wealth not produced by the efforts of human labor; but it did harm when it secured the common use of artificial wealth produced by the efforts of human labor. That is the rock on which communism has always foundered and which its unfortunate wrecked crews have forsaken, preferring to struggle in the maelstrom of capitalism. Many a good endeavorendeavour [sic] has been spoilt owing to this one serious defect, many a brilliant enthusiast has been turned into a disheartened pessimist through witnessing the failure that inevitably follows such a rash denial of the right of the worker—the right to the product of his own work. If Labor is to