Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/85

 A LITTLE ISLAND OR A LITTLE WORLD. 77

and human happiness, without much or any gain of wealth to the doer. Others again will have devoted all their energies to the extending of their possessions. What, then, shall we see, land having been all this time treated as private property ? Clearly, we shall see that the primi- tive equality has given way to inequality. Some will have very much more than one of the original shares into which the land was divided ; very many will have no land at all. Suppose that, in all things save this, our little island or our little world is Utopia that there are no wars or robberies ; that the government is absolutely pure and taxes nominal ; suppose, if you want to, any sort of a cur- rency ; imagine, if you can imagine such a world or island, that interest is utterly abolished; yet inequality in the ownership of land will have produced poverty and virtual slavery.

For the people we have supposed are human beings that is to say, in their physical natures at least, they are animals who can live only on land and by the aid of the products of land. They may make machines which will enable them to float on the sea, or perhaps to fly in the air, but to build and equip these machines they must have land and the products of land, and must constantly come back to land. Therefore those who own the land must be the masters of the rest. Thus, if one man has come to own all the land, he is their absolute master even to life or death. If they can live on the land only on his terms, then they can live only on his terms, for without land they cannot live. They are his absolute slaves, and so long as his ownership is acknowledged, if they want to live, they must do in everything as he wills.

If, however, the concentration of landownership has not gone so far as to make one or a very few men the owners of all the land if there are still so many land- owners that there is competition between them as well as

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