Henry George

“ Wages as a quantity and as a proportion Let us suppose land of diminishing qualities. The best would naturally be settled first, and as population increased production would take in the next lower quality, and so on. But as the increase of population, by permitting greater economies, adds to the effectiveness of labour, the cause which brought each quality of land successively into cultivation would at the same time increase the amount of wealth that the same quantity of labour could produce from that land. ”

“ Considered in the light of material forces or economies, the increase of knowledge, the betterment of government, etc., have the same effect as improvement in the arts. It will therefor not be necessary in this view to consider them separately. What bearing intellectual or moral progress, merely as such, has upon our problem we may hereafter consider. We are at present dealing with material progress, to which these things contribute only as they increase wealth-producing power, and we shall see their effects when we see the effects of improvements in the arts. ”

“ Now, either one-tenth of the labour and capital may be freed, and production remain the same as before; or the same amount of labour and capital may be employed, and production be correspondingly increased. But the industrial organization, as in all civilized countries, is such that any reduction in the application of labour to production will, at first at least, take the form, not of giving each labourer the same amount of produce for less work, but of throwing some of the labourers out of work and giving them none of the produce. ”

“ In what has preceded, I have, of course, spoken of inventions and improvements when generally diffused. It is hardly necessary to say that as long as an invention or an improvement is used by so few that they derive a special advantage from it, it does not, to the extent of this special advantage, affect the general distribution of wealth. ”

“ Effect of increases in population The manner in which increasing population enhances rent, as it is generally explained and illustrated, is that the increased demand for subsistence forces production to inferior soils or to inferior productive points. Thus if, with a given population, the margin of cultivation is at 30, all lands of productive power over 30 will pay rent. If the population be doubled, an additional supply of land is required and that can be obtained only by an extension of cultivation, causing other lands to yields rent that before yielded none. ”

“ Increased effectiveness absorbed in increased rent To illustrate this effect of labour-saving machinery and improvements, let us suppose a country where, as in all the countries of the civilized world, the land is in the possession of but a portion of the people. Let us suppose a permanent barrier fixed to prevent further increase of population. ”

“ Although generally mistaken for profits of capital, the special profits thus arising are really the returns of monopoly and, to the extent that they subtract from the benefits of an improvement, they do not primarily affect general distribution. For instance, the benefits of a railway or similar improvement in cheapening transportation are diffused or monopolized, according as its charges are reduced to a rate which will yield ordinary interest on the capital invested, or as its charges are kept up to a point which will yield an extraordinary return. ”

“ But in the populous district they could obtain with the same labour as good a living from much poorer land, or they could make as good a living from land of equal quality after paying a high rent, because in the midst of a large population their labour would have become more effective; not, perhaps, in the production of corn, but in the production of wealth generally-or the obtaining of all the commodities and services that are the real object of their labour. ”

“ Material progress, as commonly understood, consists of those three elements or directions of progression, in all of which the progressive nations have for some time past been advancing, though in different degrees. ”

“ If it take half a man's labour to keep him in food, and the other half to provide him clothing and shelter, an improvement which would increase his power of producing food would also increase his power of providing clothing and shelter. ”

“ If population be doubled, land of but 20 productiveness may yield to the same amount of labour as much as land Of 30 productiveness could before yield. For it must not be forgotten (what often is forgotten) that the productiveness either of land or of labour is not to be measured in any one thing, but in all desired things. A settler and his family may raise as much corn on land a hundred miles away from the nearest habitation as they could raise were their land in the centre of a populous district. ”