Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/222

 30 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

taken from land. It will be seen on consideration that all of man's production is analogous to such transporta- tion of water as we have supposed. In growing grain, or smelting metals, or building houses, or weaving cloth, or doing any of the things that constitute producing, all that man does is to change in place or form preexisting matter. As a producer man is merely a changer, not a creator} God alone creates. And since the changes in which man's production consists inhere in matter so long as they persist, the right of private ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and gives the right of owner- ship in that natural material in which the labor of pro- duction is embodied. Thus water, which in its original form and place is the common gift of God to all men, when drawn from its natural reservoir and brought into the desert, passes rightfully into the ownership of the individual who by changing its place has produced it there. But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right of temporary possession. For though man may take material from the storehouse of nature and change it in place or form to suit his desires, yet from the moment he takes it, it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood decays, iron rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, while of more perishable products, some will last for only a few months, others for only a few days, and some dis- appear immediately on use. Though, so far as we can see, matter is eternal and force forever persists ; though we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote that floats in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that stirs a leaf, yet in the ceaseless flux of nature, man's wort of moving and combining constantly passes away. Thus the recognition of the ownership of what natural material is embodied in the products of man never constitutes more than temporary possession never interferes with the reservoir provided for all. As taking water from

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