Thus all artificial objects external to man —
Wealth, are found to have their ultimate source in the
conjunction of man's activities — Labor, with
natural objects external to man — Land.
...
Wealth is produced solely by the application of Labor
to Land.51
50. It may at first seem like a great
waste of time and space to have gone through this long
analysis for no other purpose at last than to
demonstrate the self-evident fact that land and labor
are the sole original factors in the production of
Wealth. But it will have been no waste if it enables
the reader to firmly grasp the fact. Nothing is more
obvious, to be sure. Nothing is more readily assented
to. Yet by layman and college professor and economic
author alike, this simple truth is cast adrift at the
very threshold of argument or investigation, with
results akin to what might be expected in physics if
after recognizing the law of gravitation its effects
should be completely ignored.
51. There is ample authority among
economic writers for this conclusion.
Professor Ely enumerates Nature, Labor,
and Capital as the factors of production, but he
describes Capital as a combination of Nature and Labor
— Ely's Introduction, part ii, ch. iii.
Say describes industry as " nothing more
or less than human employment of natural agents."
— Say's Trea., book i, ch. ii.
And though John Stuart Mill and numerous
others speak of Land, Labor, and Capital as the three
factors of production, as does Professor Jevons, most
of them, like Jevons, recognize the fact, though in
their reasoning they often fail to profit by it, that
Capital is not a primary but a secondary requisite. See
Jevons's Pol. Ec., secs. 16, 19.
Henry George says: "Land, labor, and
capital are the factors of production. The term land
includes all natural opportunities or forces; the term
labor, all human exertion; and the term capital, all
wealth used to produce more wealth. . . Capital is not
a necessary factor in production. Labor exerted upon
land can produce wealth without the aid of capital, and
in the necessary genesis of things must so produce
wealth before capital can exist." — Progress and
Poverty, book iii, ch. i.
Also : "The complexities of production in
the civilized state, in which so great a part is borne
by exchange, and so much labor is bestowed upon
materials after they have been separated from the land,
though they may to the unthinking disguise, do not
alter the fact that all production is still the union
of the two factors, land and labor."— Id., ch.
viii.
By intelligent observers no authority is
needed. In all the phenomena of human life, whether
primitive or civilized, the lesson of the chart stands
out in bold relief. Nothing can be produced without
Labor and Land, and nothing can be named which under
any circumstances enters into productive processes that
is not resolvable into either the one or the other. To
satisfy all human wants mankind requires nothing but
human labor and natural material, and each of them is
indispensable.
This is the final analysis. In the union of Labor,
which includes all human effort,52 with Land, which
includes the whole material universe outside of man,53 we
discover the ultimate source of Wealth, which includes
all the material things that satisfy want.54 And that is
the first great truth upon which the single tax
philosophy is built.
52. The term labor includes all human
exertion in the production of wealth." — Progress
and Poverty, book i, ch. ii.
53. "The term land necessarily includes,
not merely the surface of the earth as distinguished
from the water and the air, but the whole material
universe outside of man himself, for it is only by
having access to land, from which his very body is
drawn, that man can come in contact with or use
nature." — Progress and Poverty, book i, ch.
ii.
54. "As commonly used the word 'wealth '
is applied to anything having exchange value. But ...
wealth, as alone the term can be used in political
economy, consists of natural products that have been
secured, moved, combined, separated, or in other ways
modified by human exertion, so as to fit them for the
gratification of human desires." — Progress and
Poverty, book i, ch ii. ...
e. Effect of Retaining Rent for Common
Use.
If society retained Rent for common purposes, all
incentive to hold land for any other object than
immediate use would disappear. The effect may be
illustrated by a comparison of the last preceding chart
with the following: [chart]
There is but one difference between this chart and the
chart immediately preceding. In that Rent is confiscated
to private use, whereas in this Rent is retained for
common use. All the labor force indicated with red in the
first of the two charts would not more than utilize the
space to the left and part of the adjoining one, which
would elevate Wages to what, with the given labor force,
could be produced from the poorer of the two spaces.
After that, increase of Rent would not enrich land-owners
at the expense of other classes; it would enrich the
whole community.108
108. The laborer would receive in
Distribution all that he earned and no more than he
earned in Production; and that is the natural law.
In social conditions, where industry is subdivided and
trade is intricate, it is impossible to say arbitrarily
what is the equivalent of given labor. Hence no statute
fixing the compensation for labor can really be
operative. All that we can say is that labor is worth
what men freely contract to give and take for it. But it
must be what they freely contract to take as well as what
they freely contract to give; and men are not free to
contract for the sale of their labor when labor generally
is so divorced from land as to abnormally glut the labor
market and make men's sale of their labor for almost
anything the buyer offers, the alternative of starvation.
Laborers may be as truly enslaved by divorcing labor from
land as by driving them with a whip. ...
Q36. How is it possible to determine what part of
a man's product is due to land, and what part is due to
labor?
A. All products are due wholly to the union of land and
labor. Labor is the active force, land is the passive
material; and without both there can be no product at
all. But the part of a man's product that he individually
earns, as distinguished from the part that he obtains by
virtue of advantageous location, is determined by the law
of rent — by what his location is worth.
Q57. If land and labor are equally indispensable
factors of production, why are they not equally entitled
to the product?
A. The laborer justly owns his labor, but the land-owner
cannot justly own his land. The question is not one of
the relative rights of men and land, but of men and men.
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