Britain For The British Part 11

All lands or tenements in England in the hands of subjects, are holden mediately or immediately of the King. For, in the law of England, we have not any subject's land that is not holden.

And Sir Frederick Pollock, in _English Land Lords_, says--

No absolute ownership of land is recognised by our law books, except in the Crown. All lands are supposed to be held immediately or mediately of the Crown, though no rent or service may be payable and no grant from the Crown on record.

I explained at first that I do not suggest confiscation. Really the land is the King's, and by him can be claimed; but we will let that pa.s.s.

Here we will speak only of what is reasonable and fair. Let me give a more definite idea of the hardships imposed upon the nation by the landlords.

We all know how the landlord takes a part of the wealth produced by labour and calls it "rent." But that is only simple rent. There is a worse kind of rent, which I will call "compound rent." It is known to economists as "unearned increment."

I need hardly remind you that rents are higher in large towns than in small villages. Why? Because land is more "valuable." Why is it more valuable? Because there is more trade done.

Thus a plot of land in the city of London will bring in a hundredfold more rent than a plot of the same size in some Scottish valley. For people must have lodgings, and shops, and offices, and works in the places where their business lies. Cases have been known in which land bought for a few shillings an acre has increased within a man's lifetime to a value of many guineas a yard.

This increase in value is not due to any exertion, genius, or enterprise on the part of the landowner. It is entirely due to the energy and intelligence of those who made the trade and industry of the town.

The landowner sits idle while the Edisons, the Stephensons, the Jacquards, Mawdsleys, Bessemers, and the thousands of skilled workers expand a sleepy village into a thriving town; but when the town is built, and the trade is flourishing, he steps in to reap the harvest. He raises the rent.

He raises the rent, and evermore raises the rent, so that the harder the townsfolk work, and the more the town prospers, the greater is the price he charges for the use of his land. This extortionate rent is really a fine inflicted by idleness on industry. It is simple _plunder_, and is known by the technical name of unearned increment.

It is unearned increment which condemns so many of the workers in our British towns to live in narrow streets, in back-to-back cottages, in hideous tenements. It is unearned increment which forces up the death-rate and fosters all manner of disease and vice. It is unearned increment which keeps vast areas of London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and all our large towns ugly, squalid, unhealthy, and vile.

And unearned increment is an inevitable outcome and an invariable characteristic of the private ownership of land.

On this subject Professor Thorold Rogers said--

Every permanent improvement of the soil, every railway and road, every bettering of the general condition of society, every facility given for production, every stimulus applied to consumption, _raises rent_. The landowner sleeps, but thrives.

The volume of this unearned increment is tremendous. Mr. H. B. Haldane, M.P., speaking at Stepney in 1894, declared that the land upon which London stands would be worth, apart from its population and special industries, "at the outside not more than 16,000 a year." Instead of which "the people pay in rent for the land alone 16,000,000, and, with the buildings, 40,000,000 a year." Those 16,000,000 const.i.tute a fine levied upon the workers of London by landlords.

A similar state of affairs exists in the country, where the farms are let chiefly on short leases. Here the tenant having improved his land has often lost his improvements, or, for fear of losing the improvements, has not improved his land nor even farmed it properly. In either case the landlord has been enriched while the tenant or the public has suffered.

A landlord has an estate which no farmer can make pay. A number of labourers take small plots at 5 an acre, and go in for flower culture.

They work so hard, and become so skilful, that they get 50 an acre for their produce. And the landlord raises the rent to 40 an acre.

That is "unearned increment," or "compound rent." The landlord could not make the estate pay, the farmer could not make it pay. The labourer, by his own skill and industry, does make it pay, and the landlord takes the proceeds.

And these are the men who talk about confiscation and robbery!

Do I blame the landlord? Not very much. But I blame the people for allowing him to deprive their wives and children of the necessaries, the decencies, and the joys of life.

But if you wish to know more about the treatment of tenants by landlords in England, Scotland, and Ireland, get a book called _Land Nationalisation_, by Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace, published by Swan Sonnenschein, at 1s.

That private landowners should be allowed to take millions out of the pockets of the workers is neither just nor reasonable. There is no argument in favour of landlordism that would not hold good in the case of a private claim to the sea and the air.

Imagine a King or Parliament granting to an individual the exclusive ownership of the Bristol Channel or the air of Cornwall! Such a grant would rouse the ridicule of the whole nation. The attempt to enforce such a grant would cause a revolution.

But in what way is such a grant more iniquitous or absurd than is the claim of a private citizen to the possession of Monsall Dale, or Sherwood Forest, or Covent Garden Market, or the corn lands of Ess.e.x, or the iron ore of c.u.mberland?

The Bristol Channel, the river Thames, all our high roads, and most of our bridges are public property, free for the use of all. No power in the kingdom could wrest a yard of the highway nor an acre of green sea from the possession of the nation. It is right that the road and the river, the sea and the air should be the property of the people; it is expedient that they should be the property of the people. Then by what right or by what reason can it be held that the land--Britain herself--should belong to any man, or by any man be withheld from the people--who are the British nation?

But it may be thought, because I am a Socialist, and neither rich nor influential, that my opinion should be regarded with suspicion. Allow me to offer the authority of more eminent men.

The late Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge said, in 1887--

These (our land laws) might be for the general advantage, and if they could be shown to be so, by all means they should be maintained; but if not, does any man, with what he is pleased to call his mind, deny that a state of law under which such mischief could exist, under which the country itself would exist, not for its people, but for a mere handful of them, ought to be instantly and absolutely set aside?

Two years later, in 1889, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone said--

Those persons who possess large portions of the earth's s.p.a.ce are not altogether in the same position as possessors of mere personality. Personality does not impose limitations on the action and industry of man and the well-being of the community as possession of land does, and therefore _I freely own that compulsory expropriation is a thing which is admissible, and even sound in principle_.

Speaking at Hull, in August 1885, the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain said--

The soil of every country originally belonged to its inhabitants, and if it has been thought expedient to create private ownership in place of common rights, at least that private ownership must be considered as a trust, and subject to the conditions of a trust.

And again, at Inverness, in September 1885, Mr. Chamberlain said--

When an exorbitant rent is demanded, which takes from a tenant the savings of his life, and turns him out at the end of his lease stripped of all his earnings, when a man is taxed for his own improvements, that is confiscation, and it is none the less reprehensible because it is sanctioned by the law.

These views of the land question are not merely the views of ignorant demagogues, but are fully indorsed by great lawyers, great statesmen, great authors, great divines, and great economists.

What is the principle which these eminent men teach? It is the principle enforced in the patent law, in the income tax, and in the law of copyright, that the privileges and claims, even the _rights_ of the few, must give way to the needs of the many and the welfare of the whole.

What, then, do we propose to do? I think there are very few Socialists who wish to confiscate the land without any kind of compensation. But all Socialists demand that the land shall return to the possession of the people. Britain for the British! What could be more just?

How are the people to get the land? There are many suggestions. Perhaps the fairest would be to allow the landowner the same lat.i.tude that is allowed to the inventor, who, as Mr. Mallock claims, is really the creator of two-thirds of our wealth.

We allow the inventor to draw rent on his patent for fourteen years. Why not limit the private possession of land to the same term? Pay the present owners of land the full rent for fourteen or, say, twenty years, or, in a case where land has been bought in good faith, within the past fifty years, allow the owner the full rent for thirty years. This would be more than we grant our inventors, though they _add_ to the national wealth, whereas the landlord simply takes wealth away from the national store.

The method I here advise would require a "Compulsory Purchase Act" to compel landowners to sell their land at a fair price to the nation when and wherever the public convenience required it.

This view is expressed clearly in a speech made by the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain at Trowbridge in 1885--

We propose that local authorities shall have power in every case to take land by compulsion at a fair price for every public purpose, and that they should be able to let the land again, with absolute security of tenure, for allotments and for small holdings.