Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/238

 46 THE CONDITION OF LABOR.

sun, would fall as the leaves fall at the touch of frost. Or, let for two or three seasons the earth refuse her in- crease, and how many of our millions would remain alive ?

The duty of fathers to transmit to their children prof- itable property that will enable them to keep themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of this mortal life ! What is not possible cannot be a duty. And how is it possible for fathers to do that ? Your Holiness has not considered how mankind really lives from hand to mouth, getting each day its daily bread} how little one generation does or can leave another. It is doubtful if the wealth of the civilized world all told amounts to any- thing like as much as one year's labor, while it is certain that if labor were to stop and men had to rely on exist- ing accumulation, it would be only a few days ere in the richest countries pestilence and famine would stalk.

The profitable property your Holiness refers to, is private property in land. Now profitable land, as all economists will agree, is land superior to the land that the ordinary man can get. It is land that will yield an income to the owner as owner, and therefore that will permit the owner to appropriate the products of labor without doing labor, its profitableness to the individual involving the robbery of other individuals. It is there- fore possible only for some fathers to leave their children profitable land. What therefore your Holiness practi- cally declares is, that it is the duty of all fathers to struggle to leave their children what only the few pecu- liarly strong, lucky or unscrupulous can leave ; and that, a something that involves the robbery of others their deprivation of the material gifts of God.

This anti-Christian doctrine has been long in practice throughout the Christian world. What are its results ?

Are they not the very evils set forth in your Encyc- lical? Are they not, so far from enabling men to keep

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