We hold: That—
This world is the creation of God.
The men brought into it for the brief period of their
earthly lives are the equal creatures of his bounty, the
equal subjects of his provident care.
By his constitution man is beset by physical wants, on
the satisfaction of which depend not only the maintenance
of his physical life but also the development of his
intellectual and spiritual life.
God has made the satisfaction of these wants dependent
on man’s own exertions, giving him the power and
laying on him the injunction to labor — a power
that of itself raises him far above the brute, since we
may reverently say that it enables him to become as it
were a helper in the creative work.
God has not put on man the task of making bricks
without straw. With the need for labor and the power to
labor he has also given to man the material for labor.
This material is land — man physically being a land
animal, who can live only on and from land, and can use
other elements, such as air, sunshine and water, only by
the use of land.
Being the equal creatures of the Creator, equally
entitled under his providence to live their lives and
satisfy their needs, men are equally entitled to the use
of land, and any adjustment that denies this equal use of
land is morally wrong. ...
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.) ...
2. That private property in land proceeds from
man’s gift of reason. (6-7.)
In the second place your Holiness argues that man
possessing reason and forethought may not only acquire
ownership of the fruits of the earth, but also of the
earth itself, so that out of its products he may make
provision for the future.
Reason, with its attendant forethought, is indeed the
distinguishing attribute of man; that which raises him
above the brute, and shows, as the Scriptures declare,
that he is created in the likeness of God. And this gift
of reason does, as your Holiness points out, involve the
need and right of private property in whatever is
produced by the exertion of reason and its attendant
forethought, as well as in what is produced by physical
labor. In truth, these elements of man’s production
are inseparable, and labor involves the use of reason. It
is by his reason that man differs from the animals in
being a producer, and in this sense a maker. Of
themselves his physical powers are slight, forming as it
were but the connection by which the mind takes hold of
material things, so as to utilize to its will the matter
and forces of nature. It is mind, the intelligent reason,
that is the prime mover in labor, the essential agent in
production.
The right of private ownership does therefore
indisputably attach to things provided by man’s
reason and forethought. But it cannot attach to things
provided by the reason and forethought of God!
To illustrate: Let us suppose a company traveling
through the desert as the Israelites traveled from Egypt.
Such of them as had the forethought to provide themselves
with vessels of water would acquire a just right of
property in the water so carried, and in the thirst of
the waterless desert those who had neglected to provide
themselves, though they might ask water from the
provident in charity, could not demand it in right. For
while water itself is of the providence of God, the
presence of this water in such vessels, at such place,
results from the providence of the men who carried it.
Thus they have to it an exclusive right.
But suppose others use their forethought in pushing
ahead and appropriating the springs, refusing when their
fellows come up to let them drink of the water save as
they buy it of them. Would such forethought give any
right?
Your Holiness, it is not the forethought of carrying
water where it is needed, but the forethought of seizing
springs, that you seek to defend in defending the private
ownership of land!
Let me show this more fully, since it may be worth
while to meet those who say that if private property in
land be not just, then private property in the products
of labor is not just, as the material of these products
is taken from land. It will be seen on consideration that
all of man’s production is analogous to such
transportation of water as we have supposed. In growing
grain, or smelting metals, or building houses, or weaving
cloth, or doing any of the things that constitute
producing, all that man does is to change in place or
form preexisting matter. As a producer man is merely a
changer, not a creator; God alone creates. And since the
changes in which man’s production consists inhere
in matter so long as they persist, the right of private
ownership attaches the accident to the essence, and gives
the right of ownership in that natural material in which
the labor of production is embodied. Thus water, which in
its original form and place is the common gift of God to
all men, when drawn from its natural reservoir and
brought into the desert, passes rightfully into the
ownership of the individual who by changing its place has
produced it there.
But such right of ownership is in reality a mere right
of temporary possession. For though man may take material
from the storehouse of nature and change it in place or
form to suit his desires, yet from the moment he takes
it, it tends back to that storehouse again. Wood decays,
iron rusts, stone disintegrates and is displaced, while
of more perishable products, some will last for only a
few months, others for only a few days, and some
disappear immediately on use. Though, so far as we can
see, matter is eternal and force forever persists; though
we can neither annihilate nor create the tiniest mote
that floats in a sunbeam or the faintest impulse that
stirs a leaf, yet in the ceaseless flux of nature,
man’s work of moving and combining constantly
passes away. Thus the recognition of the ownership of
what natural material is embodied in the products of man
never constitutes more than temporary possession —
never interferes with the reservoir provided for all. As
taking water from one place and carrying it to another
place by no means lessens the store of water, since
whether it is drunk or spilled or left to evaporate, it
must return again to the natural reservoirs — so is
it with all things on which man in production can lay the
impress of his labor.
Hence, when you say that man’s reason puts it
within his right to have in stable and permanent
possession not only things that perish in the using, but
also those that remain for use in the future, you are
right in so far as you may include such things as
buildings, which with repair will last for generations,
with such things as food or fire-wood, which are
destroyed in the use. But when you infer that man can
have private ownership in those permanent things of
nature that are the reservoirs from which all must draw,
you are clearly wrong. Man may indeed hold in private
ownership the fruits of the earth produced by his labor,
since they lose in time the impress of that labor, and
pass again into the natural reservoirs from which they
were taken, and thus the ownership of them by one works
no injury to others. But he cannot so own the earth
itself, for that is the reservoir from which must
constantly be drawn not only the material with which
alone men can produce, but even their very bodies.
The conclusive reason why man cannot claim ownership
in the earth itself as he can in the fruits that he by
labor brings forth from it, is in the facts stated by you
in the very next paragraph (7), when you truly say:
Man’s needs do not die out, but recur; satisfied
today, they demand new supplies tomorrow. Nature,
therefore, owes to man a storehouse that shall never
fail, the daily supply of his daily wants. And this he
finds only in the inexhaustible fertility of the
earth.
By man you mean all men. Can what nature owes to all
men be made the private property of some men, from which
they may debar all other men?
Let me dwell on the words of your Holiness,
“Nature, therefore, owes to man a storehouse that
shall never fail.” By Nature you mean God. Thus
your thought, that in creating us, God himself has
incurred an obligation to provide us with a storehouse
that shall never fail, is the same as is thus expressed
and carried to its irresistible conclusion by the
Bishop of
Meath:
God was perfectly free in the act by which He
created us; but having created us he bound himself by
that act to provide us with the means necessary for our
subsistence. The land is the only source of this kind
now known to us. The land, therefore, of every country
is the common property of the people of that country,
because its real owner, the Creator who made it, has
transferred it as a voluntary gift to them.
“Terram autem dedit filiis
hominum.” Now, as every individual in that
country is a creature and child of God, and as all his
creatures are equal in his sight, any settlement of the
land of a country that would exclude the humblest man
in that country from his share of the common
inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong
to that man, but, moreover, be AN IMPIOUS RESISTANCE TO
THE BENEVOLENT INTENTIONS OF HIS CREATOR. ...
Your Holiness seems to assume that there is some just
rate of wages that employers ought to be willing to pay
and that laborers should be content to receive, and to
imagine that if this were secured there would be an end
of strife. This rate you evidently think of as that which
will give working-men a frugal living, and perhaps enable
them by hard work and strict economy to lay by a little
something.
But how can a just rate of wages be fixed without the
“higgling of the market” any more than the
just price of corn or pigs or ships or paintings can be
so fixed? And would not arbitrary regulation in the one
case as in the other check that interplay that most
effectively promotes the economical adjustment of
productive forces? Why should buyers of labor, any more
than buyers of commodities, be called on to pay higher
prices than in a free market they are compelled to pay?
Why should the sellers of labor be content with anything
less than in a free market they can obtain? Why should
working-men be content with frugal fare when the world is
so rich? Why should they be satisfied with a lifetime of
toil and stinting, when the world is so beautiful? Why
should not they also desire to gratify the higher
instincts, the finer tastes? Why should they be forever
content to travel in the steerage when others find the
cabin more enjoyable?
Nor will they. The ferment of our time does not arise
merely from the fact that working-men find it harder to
live on the same scale of comfort. It is also and perhaps
still more largely due to the increase of their desires
with an improved scale of comfort. This increase of
desire must continue. For working-men are men.
And man is the unsatisfied animal.
He is not an ox, of whom it may be said, so
much grass, so much grain, so much water, and a little
salt, and he will be content. On the contrary, the more
he gets the more he craves. When he has enough food then
he wants better food. When he gets a shelter then he
wants a more commodious and tasty one. When his animal
needs are satisfied then mental and spiritual desires
arise.
This restless discontent is of the nature of
man — of that nobler nature that raises him above
the animals by so immeasurable a gulf, and shows him to
be indeed created in the likeness of God. It is
not to be quarreled with, for it is the motor of all
progress. It is this that has raised St. Peter’s
dome and on dull, dead canvas made the angelic face of
the Madonna to glow; it is this that has weighed suns and
analyzed stars, and opened page after page of the
wonderful works of creative intelligence; it is this that
has narrowed the Atlantic to an ocean ferry and trained
the lightning to carry our messages to the remotest
lands; it is this that is opening to us possibilities
beside which all that our modern civilization has as yet
accomplished seem small. Nor can it be repressed save by
degrading and embruting men; by reducing Europe to Asia.
... read
the whole letter
DOES not the fact that all of the things which furnish
man's subsistence have the power to multiply many fold
— some of them many thousand fold, and some of them
many million or even billion fold — while he is
only doubling his numbers, show that, let human beings
increase to the full extent of their reproductive power,
the increase of population can never exceed subsistence?
This is clear when it is remembered that though in the
vegetable and animal kingdoms each species, by virtue of
its reproductive power, naturally and necessarily presses
against the conditions which limit its further increase,
yet these conditions are nowhere fixed and final. No
species reaches the ultimate limit of soil, water, air,
and sunshine; but the actual limit of each is in the
existence of other species, its rivals, its enemies, or
its food. Thus the conditions which limit the existence
of such of these species as afford him subsistence man
can extend (in some cases his mere appearance will extend
them), and thus the reproductive forces of the species
which supply his wants, instead of wasting themselves
against their former limit, start forward in his service
at a pace which his powers of increase cannot rival. If
he but shoot hawks, food-birds will increase: if he but
trap foxes the wild rabbits will multiply; the bumble bee
moves with the pioneer, and on the organic matter with
which man's presence fills the rivers, fishes feed.
— Progress & Poverty — Book II, Chapter
3: Population and Subsistence: Inferences from
Analogy
IF bears instead of men had been shipped from Europe
to the North American continent, there would now be no
more bears than in the time of Columbus, and possibly
fewer, for bear food would not have been increased nor
the conditions of bear life extended, by the bear
immigration, but probably the reverse. But within the
limits of the United States alone, there are now
forty-five millions of men where then there were only a
few hundred thousand, and yet there is now within that
territory much more food per capita for the forty-five
millions than there was then for the few hundred
thousand. It is not the increase of food that has caused
this increase of men; but the increase of men that has
brought about the increase of food. There is more food,
simply because there are more Man. — Progress &
Poverty — Book II, Chapter 3: Population and
Subsistence: Inferences from Analogy
TWENTY men working together will, where nature is
niggardly, produce more than twenty times the wealth that
one man can produce where nature is most bountiful. The
denser the population the more minute becomes the
subdivision of labor, the greater the economies of
production and distribution, and, hence, the very reverse
of the Malthusian doctrine is true; and, within the
limits in which we have any reason to suppose increase
would still go on, in any given state of civilization a
greater number of people can produce a larger
proportionate amount of wealth and more fully supply
their wants, than can a smaller number. — Progress
& Poverty — Book II, Chapter 4: Population and
Subsistence: Disproof of the Malthusian Theory
OUT upon nature, in upon him himself, back through the
mists that shroud the past, forward into the darkness
that overhangs the future, turns the restless desire that
arises when the animal wants slumber in satisfaction.
Beneath things he seeks the law; he would know how the
globe was forged, and the stars were hung, and trace to
their sources the springs of life. And then, as the man
develops his nobler nature, there arises the desire
higher yet — the passion of passions, the hope of
hopes — the desire that he, even he, may somehow
aid in making life better and brighter, in destroying
want and sin, sorrow and shame. He masters and curbs the
animal; he turns his back upon the feast and renounces
the place of power; he leaves it to others to accumulate
wealth, to gratify pleasant tastes, to bask themselves in
the warm sunshine of the brief day. He works for those he
never saw and never can see; for a fame, or it may be but
for a scant justice, that can only come long after the
clods have rattled upon his coffin lid. He toils in the
advance, where it is cold, and there is little cheer from
men, and the stones are sharp and the brambles thick.
Amid the scoffs of the present and the sneers that
stab like knives, he builds for the future; he cuts the
trail that progressive humanity may hereafter broaden
into a highroad. Into higher, grander spheres desire
mounts and beckons, and a star that rises in the east
leads him on. Lo! the pulses of the man throb with the
yearnings of the god — he would aid in the process
of the suns! — Progress & Poverty — Book
II, Chapter 3, Population and Subsistence: Inferences
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