Your use, in so many passages of your Encyclical, of
the inclusive term “property” or
“private” property, of which in morals
nothing can be either affirmed or denied, makes your
meaning, if we take isolated sentences, in many places
ambiguous. But reading it as a whole, there can be no
doubt of your intention that private property in land
shall be understood when you speak merely of private
property. With this interpretation, I find that the
reasons you urge for private property in land are eight.
Let us consider them in order of presentation. You
urge:
1. That what is bought with rightful property is
rightful property. (RN, paragraph 5) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from
man’s gift of reason. (RN, paragraphs 6-7.)
...
3. That private property in land deprives no one of the
use of land. (RN, paragraph 8.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the
land itself. (RN, paragraphs 9-10.) ...
5. That private property in land has the support of the
common opinion of mankind, and has conduced to peace and
tranquillity, and that it is sanctioned by Divine Law.
(RN, paragraph 11.) ...
6. That fathers should provide for their children and
that private property in land is necessary to enable them
to do so. (RN, paragraphs 14-17.) ...
7. That the private ownership of land stimulates
industry, increases wealth, and attaches men to the soil
and to their country. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
8. That the right to possess private property in land is
from nature, not from man; that the state has no right to
abolish it, and that to take the value of landownership
in taxation would be unjust and cruel to the private
owner. (RN, paragraph 51.) ...
4. That Industry expended on land gives
ownership in the land itself. (9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended on
land gives a right to ownership of the land, and that the
improvement of land creates benefits indistinguishable
and inseparable from the land itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify the
ownership of land by those who expend industry on it. It
would not justify private property in land as it exists.
On the contrary, it would justify a gigantic no-rent
declaration that would take land from those who now
legally own it, the landlords, and turn it over to the
tenants and laborers. And if it also be that improvements
cannot be distinguished and separated from the land
itself, how could the landlords claim consideration even
for improvements they had made?
But your Holiness cannot mean what your words imply.
What you really mean, I take it, is that the original
justification and title of landownership is in the
expenditure of labor on it. But neither can this justify
private property in land as it exists. For is it not all
but universally true that existing land titles do not
come from use, but from force or fraud?
Take Italy! Is it not true that the greater part of
the land of Italy is held by those who so far from ever
having expended industry on it have been mere
appropriators of the industry of those who have? Is this
not also true of Great Britain and of other countries?
Even in the United States, where the forces of
concentration have not yet had time fully to operate and
there has been some attempt to give land to users, it is
probably true today that the greater part of the land is
held by those who neither use it nor propose to use it
themselves, but merely hold it to compel others to pay
them for permission to use it.
And if industry give ownership to land what are the
limits of this ownership? If a man may acquire the
ownership of several square miles of land by grazing
sheep on it, does this give to him and his heirs the
ownership of the same land when it is found to contain
rich mines, or when by the growth of population and the
progress of society it is needed for farming, for
gardening, for the close occupation of a great city? Is
it on the rights given by the industry of those who first
used it for grazing cows or growing potatoes that you
would found the title to the land now covered by the city
of New York and having a value of thousands of millions
of dollars?
But your contention is not valid. Industry expended on
land gives ownership in the fruits of that industry, but
not in the land itself, just as industry expended on the
ocean would give a right of ownership to the fish taken
by it, but not a right of ownership in the ocean. Nor yet
is it true that private ownership of land is necessary to
secure the fruits of labor on land; nor does the
improvement of land create benefits indistinguishable and
inseparable from the land itself. That secure possession
is necessary to the use and improvement of land I have
already explained, but that ownership is not necessary is
shown by the fact that in all civilized countries land
owned by one person is cultivated and improved by other
persons. Most of the cultivated land in the British
Islands, as in Italy and other countries, is cultivated
not by owners but by tenants. And so the costliest
buildings are erected by those who are not owners of the
land, but who have from the owner a mere right of
possession for a time on condition of certain payments.
Nearly the whole of London has been built in this way,
and in New York, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Sydney
and Melbourne, as well as in continental cities, the
owners of many of the largest edifices will be found to
be different persons from the owners of the ground. So
far from the value of improvements being inseparable from
the value of land, it is in individual transactions
constantly separated. For instance, one-half of the land
on which the immense Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago
stands was recently separately sold, and in Ceylon it is
a not infrequent occurrence for one person to own a
fruit-tree and another to own the ground in which it is
implanted.
There is, indeed, no improvement of land, whether it
be clearing, plowing, manuring, cultivating, the digging
of cellars, the opening of wells or the building of
houses, that so long as its usefulness continues does not
have a value clearly distinguishable from the value of
the land. For land having such improvements will always
sell or rent for more than similar land without them.
If, therefore, the state levy a tax equal to what the
land irrespective of improvement would bring, it will
take the benefits of mere ownership, but will leave the
full benefits of use and improvement, which the
prevailing system does not do. And since the holder, who
would still in form continue to be the owner, could at
any time give or sell both possession and improvements,
subject to future assessment by the state on the value of
the land alone, he will be perfectly free to retain or
dispose of the full amount of property that the exertion
of his labor or the investment of his capital has
attached to or stored up in the land.
Thus, what we propose would secure, as it is
impossible in any other way to secure, what you properly
say is just and right — ”that the results of
labor should belong to him who has labored.” But
private property in land — to allow the holder
without adequate payment to the state to take for himself
the benefit of the value that attaches to land with
social growth and improvement — does take the
results of labor from him who has labored, does turn over
the fruits of one man’s labor to be enjoyed by
another. For labor, as the active factor, is the producer
of all wealth. Mere ownership produces nothing. A man
might own a world, but so sure is the decree that
“by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat
bread,” that without labor he could not get a meal
or provide himself a garment. Hence, when the owners of
land, by virtue of their ownership and without laboring
themselves, get 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
distinguished 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
enormous 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 objection to the system.
It recently came to light in New York that a man
having no title whatever had been for years collecting
rents on a piece of land that the growth of the city had
made very valuable. Those who paid these rents had never
stopped to ask whether he had any right to them. They
felt that they had no right to land that so many others
would like to have, without paying for it, and did not
think of, or did not care for, the rights of all. ...
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