OR let him go to Edinburgh, the "modern Athens," of
which Scotsmen speak with pride, and in buildings from
whose roofs a bowman might strike the spires of twenty
churches he will find human beings living as he would not
keep his meanest dog. Let him toil up the stairs of one
of those monstrous buildings, let him enter one of those
"dark houses," let him close the door, and in the
blackness think what life must be in such a place. Then
let him try the reduction to iniquity. And if he go to
that good charity (but, alas! how futile is Charity
without Justice!) where little children are kept while
their mothers are at work, and children are fed who would
otherwise go hungry, he may see infants whose limbs are
shrunken from want of nourishment. Perhaps they may tell
him, as they told me, of that little girl, barefooted,
ragged, and hungry, who, when they gave her bread, raised
her eyes and clasped her hands, and thanked our Father in
Heaven for His bounty to her. They who told me that never
dreamed, I think, of its terrible meaning. But I ask the
Duke of Argyll, did that little child, thankful for that
poor dole, get what our Father provided for her? Is He so
niggard? If not, what is it, who is it, that stands,
between such children and our Father's bounty? If it be
an institution, is it not our duty to God and to our
neighbor to rest not till we destroy it? If it be a man,
were it not better for him that a millstone were hanged
about his neck and he were cast into the depths of the
sea? — The Reduction to Iniquity (a reply to the
Duke of Argyll), The Nineteenth Century, July, 1884
WE are so accustomed to poverty that even in the most
advanced countries we regard it as the natural lot of the
great masses of the people; that we take it as a matter
of course that even in our highest civilization large
classes should want the necessaries of healthful life,
and the vast majority should only get a poor and pinched
living by the hardest toil. There are professors of
political economy who teach that this condition of things
is the result of social laws of which it is idle to
complain! There are ministers of religion who preach that
this is the condition which an all-wise, all-powerful
Creator intended for His children! If an architect were
to build a theater so that not more than one-tenth of the
audience could see and hear, we should call him a bungler
and a botcher. If a man were to give a feast and provide
so little food that nine-tenths of his guests must go
away hungry, we should call him a fool, or worse. Yet so
accustomed are we to poverty, that even the preachers of
what passes for Christianity tell us that the great
Architect of the Universe, to whose infinite skill all
nature testifies, has made such a botch job of this world
that the vast majority of the human creatures whom He has
called into it are condemned by the conditions he has
imposed to want, suffering, and brutalizing toil that
gives no opportunity for the development of mental powers
— must pass their lives in a hard struggle to
merely live! — Social Problems
But, in reality, the cause is that which always has,
and always must result in slavery — the
monopolization by some of what nature has designed for
all. . . . Private ownership of land is the nether
millstone. Material progress is the upper millstone.
Between them; with an increasing pressure, the working
classes are being ground. — Progress & Poverty
— Book VII, Chapter 2, Justice of the Remedy:
Enslavement of laborers the ultimate result of private
property in land
ONLY a little while ago nations were bought and sold,
traded off by treaty and bequeathed by will. Where now is
the right divine of kings? Only a little while ago, and
human flesh and blood were legal property. Where are now
the vested rights of chattel slavery? And shall this
wrong, that involves monarchy, and involves slavery
— this injustice from which both spring —
long continue? Shall the ploughers for ever plough the
backs of a class condemned to toil? Shall the millstones
of greed for ever grind the faces of the poor? Ladies and
gentlemen, it is not in the order of the universe! As one
who for years has watched and waited, I tell you the glow
of dawn is in the sky. Whether it come with the carol of
larks or the roll of the war-drums, it is coming —
it will come. The standard that I have tried to raise
tonight may be tom by prejudice and blackened by calumny;
it may now move forward, and again be forced back. But
once loosed, it can never again be furled! To beat down
and cover up the truth that I have tried tonight to make
clear to you, selfishness will call on ignorance. But it
has in it the germinative force of truth, and the times
are ripe for it. If the flint oppose it, the flint must
split or crumble! Paul planteth, and Apollos watereth,
but God giveth the increase. The ground is ploughed; the
seed is set; the good tree will grow.
So little now, only the eye of faith can see it. So
little now; so tender and so weak. But sometime, the
birds of heaven shall sing in its branches; sometime, the
weary shall find rest beneath its shade! — Speech:
Why Work is Scarce, Wages Low and Labour Restless (1877,
San Francisco) ... go to "Gems from
George"