Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/231

 OPEN LETTER TO POPE LEO XIH. 39

the products of labor in abundance, these things must come from the labor of others, must be the fruits of others' sweat, taken from those who have a right to them and enjoyed by those who have no right to them.

The only utility of private ownership of land as distin- guished from possession is the evil utility of giving to the owner products of labor he does not earn. For until land will yield to its owner some return beyond that of the labor and capital he expends on it that is to say, until by sale or rental he can without expenditure of labor obtain from it products of labor, ownership amounts to no more than security of possession, and has no value. Its importance and value begin only when, either in the present or prospectively, it will yield a revenue that is to say, will enable the owner as owner to obtain products of labor without exertion on his part, and thus to enjoy the results of others' labor.

What largely keeps men from realizing the robbery involved in private property in land is that in the most striking cases the robbery is not of individuals, but of the community. For, as I have before explained, it is impossible for rent in the economic sense that value which attaches to land by reason of social growth and improvement to go to the user. It can go only to the owner or to the community. Thus those who pay enor- mous rents for the use of land in such centers as London or New York are not individually injured. Individually they get a return for what they pay, and must feel that they have no better right to the use of such peculiarly advantageous localities without paying for it than have thousands of others. And so, not thinking or not caring for the interests of the community, they make no objed- tion to the system.

It recently came to light in New York that a man hav- ing no title whatever had been for years collecting rents

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