Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/343

Rh to produce and exchange goods, every man would get all that he should fairly have and would hold it untouched even by the government. There could then be no undeserved or involuntary poverty and little or no individual class, race or national jealousy, envy or hatred. Each individual and each nation would benefit from all of the others and their mutuality of interests would promote friendship and good-will. No individual, race or nation will then have anything worth while to fight for or about. Under present conditions, there are many things to fight for, even aside from the rights of kings to rule or of nations to expand. It is true, however, that but few wars are waged for the rights of the masses. It is also true that but few wars are begun with the consent of the majority of the people.

It is reasonably safe to say that there can not be peace without justice. Until justice is established, poverty, crime, disease, jealousy, hatred and discontent will continue, and industrial, civil and foreign wars will be waged without end.

As civilization extends, commerce develops, cities grow, and land values increase, there is more and more need of taxing land values and of untaxing industry and commerce. Not only have municipal, state and national revenue needs increased so that, practically, they can not be met in any other way than by taxing land values, but human progress has, apparently, reached a point beyond which it cannot proceed until special privileges in land and in trade are abolished. From now on, times and things will be more and more out of joint until such changes are made. Even in the matters of health, hygiene and sanitation, we can not make much further progress until we tax land values and untax industry and commerce. This is the conclusion reached by Surgeon-General William C. Gorgas. "Poverty," he says, "is the greatest single cause of bad sanitary conditions."

Some such conclusions as these must be reached by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, if its reports are to be of great value to us.

It is undoubtedly true that the evils of special privilege have been accentuated and increased, temporarily at least, by the accident of gold depreciation. Gold has been depreciating rapidly for about eighteen years. Since 1896 or 1897, the gold dollar has lost about one third of its exchange or purchasing value. Gold is depreciating in value because its supply is increasing more rapidly than is the supply of other commodities. Its supply is increasing because, under the cyaniding and chlorination processes of production, first inaugurated about twenty-five years ago, gold is being produced much cheaper than ever before. The yearly output of gold is now four times what it was in 1890, and ten times what it was in 1860.