Is Capital the Mother of Labor?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 481, 17 July 1890, Page 3

Is Capital the Mother of Labor?

[CLEMENT M. BAILHACHE IN THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW FOR MAY, 1890.] A giant at play is always an interesting spectacle to ordinary mortals. He seems nearer to our level when we find that to him and us alike dulce eat deaipere in loco. It is for this reason that I feel profoundly grateful to Professor Huxley for his article *• Capital the Mother of Labor ” in last month’s Nineteenth Century. There we see the unbendings of a great mind—Capital, says the Professor, is the mother of labor. The proof is very simple: Can a man be born before his mother? No. Must not the mother eat while the child is maturing ? Yes. Then capital is the motherof labor, Q E.D It is an exciting operation for a pigmy merely to watch the gambols of a giant. For my part I have just breath enough left to inquire whether the mother must not work before she can eat —whether labor must not be an essential ingredient in all capital, and whether therefore if capital is the mother of labor, the child must not be born before the mother. Not at all, says the giant. By capital I mean something entirely different from what is ordinarily meant by that word. By capital I mean land. There i?, you know, no difference between land and capital. The giant remains master of the field. Excellent fooling i’ faith, though perhaps a little hard on those devoted followers of Professor Huxley who, like Lord Bramwell mistaking the jest for sober earnest, repeat the same proposition in other forms. Even the Heathen Chinee did not play it off upon his friends.

If however one may accept Professor Huxley’s jokes and Lord Bramwell’s serious statement as authoritative, the fundamental difference between the upholders of the system of private ownership of land and the advocates of Lind Nationalization is this: The former contend that laud Is as properly the subject of private ownership as any other property, a watch for example; while the latter contend that land has characteristics peculiar to itself, rendering it unfit for private ownership. With great deference to the doughty champions of lalatez faire, I venture to think that their contention cannot be supported. la it not true of land to say— It is necessary to life, is limited in quantity ; contains no element of human labor ? I think not; certainly not in a watch.

If this combination of qualities is peculiar to land, there shou’d be no difficulty, in spite of Lord Bramwell’s avowed inability in understanding the poaribilty of treating land on ® “ l “ Brent footing from other property. . The demand for euoh treatment may be right or wrong ; but at least it ie intelligible. The test for the righteousness of this demand is, according to L .rd Bramwell, the common weal.

That test I gladly accept. It would need a bolder man than I to incur the contempt of Professor Huxley and his followers by suggesting that man has any natural rights—has even a right to live, I will, however, summon up courage to submit two or three reasons why private ownership of land ie irrohoncileable witb|th. Mnunoa weal>

Lord Bramwell, at any rate, must admit that the common weal requires that in the various relationships of social and business life, such as landlord and tenant, master and servant, there should be freedom of contract. Perfect freedom of contract imports equa’ity of alternatives. Freedom of contract cannot be sa ; d to exist even imperfectly unless reasonable alternatives are open to both contracting parties. What reasonable alternatives has a landless man bargaining with a land owner ? Is not the farmer practically as much at the mercy of the latter as the lonely traveller at that of the armed highwayman ? Are not all the landless man’s promises made uuder duress ?

Again does not the {common weal require that the people should be eelf-xoverning ? If so, then, in this respect too, private ownership of land io harmful. Hiatory and experience alike teach us that the land owners are the law makers. Let one more reason suffice. la it not right, does not the common weal require that the laborer should reap the fruits of his labor, and should not be compelled to share such fruits with those who have contributed nothing towards their production ? But private ownership of land compels the landless to t-hare the produce of their labor with the landowners, although these latter have in no way assisted in the production.

They do not assist by work. Nor do they contribute towards the result in any other way. If they claim to provide the land, the claim is preposterous. How can any man provide what no man has had any share in producing ? Carlyle has long since described the power of land owning as an alchemy, whereby he that hath land can extract from the landless all the produce of his labor abov-5 barest subsistence. The alchemy is not only powerful, but it is so subtle withal, that it has long rendered landed and landless alike blind to the true nature of the transaction. The landless, at any rate, are beginning to open their eyes ; to see that the landlord is the laborers’ enemy. Nor his all the dust that Professor Huxley can raise so much magic in it as to enable tho landlord to assume the character of a harmless villlager.