Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/332

 140 THE CONDITION OP LABOR.

50. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him to maintain himself, his wife, and his children in reason- able comfort, he will not find it difficult, if he is a sensible man, to study economy ; and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by a little property; nature and reason would urge him to this. We have seen that this great Labor question cannot be solved except by assum- ing as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many of the people as possible to become owners.

51. Many excellent results will follow from this ; and first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided. For the effect of civil change and revolution has been to divide society into two widely differing castes. On the one side there is the party which holds the power because it holds the wealth ; which has in its grasp all labor and all trade, which manipulates for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which is powerfully represented in the coun- cils of the State itself. On the other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering, and always ready for disturbance. If working-people can be encouraged to look forward to obtaining a share in the land, the result will be that the gulf between vast wealth and deep poverty will be bridged over, and the two orders will be brought nearer together. Another conse- quence will be the greater abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that which is their own ; nay, they learn to love the very soil which yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear to them. It is evident how such a spirit of willing labor would add to the produce of the earth and to the wealth

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