Scotland
and Scotsmen
is the
second time I have had the privilege of standing in this hall. I
visited Scotland once before, but only Glasgow. I came in by night
in a Pullman car, and I went back again by night in a Pullman car,
and I saw nothing of the country. The audience that I then addressed
was an Irish audience — it was on St. Patrick’s night.
This audience is a general audience; I presume a Scottish audience.
Now, I have been pretty well abused. I read
in the papers all sorts of things about myself, and if I did not
know Henry George pretty well, I had thought he was a cross between
a thief and a fool. These charges I have never noticed; nevertheless,
there is one charge that has been made against me since I came to
Scotland which I would like to say a word about; I have been accused
of flattering Scotsmen. The first place where I spoke in Scotland
was in Dundee, and I was glad to get before a Scottish audience.
Itso happens that in my own country I know very many Scotsmen, and
among the men who stand with me are very many Scotsmen. These Scotsmen
have always been telling me: “Ah, a Scottish audience is the
thing; wait till the Scottish people take hold of this question,
and they will go to the logical end.” I was glad to get before
a Scottish audience, and I told them about my Scottish friends,
and I told them about the letter I had received from a good ‘canny’
Scotsman, who said to me: “Don’t waste your time on
these English people. They are a ‘beery’ set. Beer confuses
and dulls their understandings. You can do far more good in Scotland,
where they are a logical, clear-headed people; and if they drink
anything at all, it is only whisky, which does not have such a confusing
effect on the intellect. “Well, I told them that, in the frankness
of my nature, and next morning the papers, in their usual denunciation,
said I took an advantage by flattering a Scottish audience. Now,
I may have been accused of many things, but I don’t think
those who know me would accuse me of such a thing as attempting
to flatter Scotsmen about Scotland. I doubt if that is possible.
When I came from New York to California, a Scottish
banker sought me out and said: “I had a wager about you, and
I want to ask you a personal question. You are an American by birth?”
And I said: “I am.” “Have you not Scottish blood
in, your veins?” “Well,” I said: “My mother’s
father was a Glasgow body.” Says he: “I have won my
bet; it’s through your mother that you get your talent.”
That man had, and still has, a theory that every great man is a
Scotsman, with two or three exceptions, and in these cases a mistake
was made. Now, joking aside, I do not want to flatter anybody; and
if Scotsmen don’t like to be flattered, will you let me tell
you tonight some home truths — some things, that are not complimentary?
I draw my blood from these islands. But it so happens this is the
only place to which I can trace my ancestry with any certainty.
I do not know but that some of my own kindred perhaps today live
in Glasgow, and it is from Glasgow men and women some of my blood,
at least, is drawn. I am not proud of it. If I were a Glasgow man
today I would not be proud of it.
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Here you have a great and rich city, and
here you have poverty and destitution that would appal a heathen.
Right on these streets of yours the very stranger can see sights
that could not be seen in any tribe of savages in anything like
normal conditions. “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching
of the word” — that is the motto of this great, proud
city. What sort of a word is it that here has been preached? Or,
let your preaching have been what it may, what is your practice?
Are these the fruits of the word — this poverty, this destitution,
this vice and degradation? To call this a Christian community is
a slander on Christianity.
Low wages, want, vice, degradation — these
are not the fruits of Christianity. They come from the ignoring
and denial of the vital principles of Christianity. Let you people
of Glasgow not merely erect church after church, you also subscribe
money to send missionaries to the heathen. I wish the heathen were
a little richer, that they might subscribe money and send missionaries
to such so-called Christian communities as this — to point
to the luxury, the very ostentation of wealth, on the one hand,
and to the bare-footed, ill-clad women on the other; to your men
and women with bodies stunted and minds distorted; to your little
children growing up in such conditions that only a miracle can keep
them pure! Excuse me for calling your attention to these unpleasant
truths; they are something that people with hearts in their breasts
ought to think of.
John Bright, in his installation speech to the Glasgow University
in 1883, made a statement, taken from the census of Scotland, in
which he declared that 41 families out of every ioo in Glasgow lived
in houses having only one room. He further said that 37 per cent
beyond this 41 per cent dwelt in houses with only two rooms; thus
78 per cent, or nearly four-fifths of the population, dwelt in houses
of one or two rooms; and he went on to say further, that in Scotland
nearly one-third of the people dwelt in houses of only one room,
and that more than two-thirds, or 70 per cent, dwelt in houses of
not more than two rooms. Is not that an appalling statement; in
the full blaze of the nineteenth century, in the year of grace 1884,
here in this great city of Scotland — Christian Scotland!
Now, consider what it implies — this crowding of men, women,
and children together. People do not herd that way unless driven
by dire want and necessity. These figures imply want and suffering,
and brutish degradation, of which every citizen of Glasgow, every
Scotsman, should be ashamed.
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A shocking illustration Here I take at random
from one of your papers of this evening a story, a mere item of
an inquest held at Peterborough. The deceased was a married woman,
the house had no furniture, and the four children were half starved.
There was no food in the house, and the only protection against
the chills of night were three guano bags — a basket of litter
for the whole family. The dead body of the mother was found to be
a mass of sores, and the left arm was shrivelled up. The daughter
stated that when they got food the father would bite first, and
pass it round in turn. The dying woman craved a bun, but they could
not give her even that. In their verdict of death from natural causes,
paralysis, deep-seated sores, and exhaustion, the jury stated that
the husband had been guilty of gross and unpardonable neglect to
his wife and family. But this seems to be based upon the fact that
he had not taken his wife to the almshouse, though, as he stated,
he had tried to get her into the almshouse, but had been refused,
unless he would go too. There is nothing to show that he was idle
or drunken. He was but a labourer, and seems to have tried his best
to get what work he couki, and came home every night to lie beside
that poor woman on the rotting straw.
But take the bare facts. Among what tribe of
savages in the whole world, in anything like a time of peace, would
such a thing as that be possible? I have seen, I believe, the most
unfortunate savages on the face of the earth — the Tierra
del Fuegians, who are spoken of as “the very lowest of mankind”;
the black-fellows of Australia; the Digger Indians of California.
I would rather take my chances, were I on the threshold of life
tonight, among those people, than come into the world in this highly-civilised
Christian community in the condition in which thousands are compelled
to live. The fault of the husband, the verdict says! I know of this
case only what the papers say; but this I do know, from the testimony
of men of position and veracity, from officials and ministers of
the Gospel, that such things as that are happening every day in
this country, not to drunken men, but to the families of men honest,
sober, and industrious. Why, in this great, rich city of yours,
there are today numbers and numbers of men who cannot get employment.
Here the wages of your engineers were reduced a little while ago,
and they had to submit. The engineers of Belfast had also to submit
to a reduction of wages, because there were so many unemployed shipwrights
and engineers in Glasgow that they feared they could not maintain
a strike. Am I not right in saying that such a state of things is
but typical of that which exists everywhere throughout the civilised
world? And I am bound to say that it is a state of things you ought
to be ashamed of. I speak, not because they do not exist in my own
country, for in their degree there is just the same state of things
in America. But is not the spirit that, ignoring this, gives thanks
and praise to the Almighty Father, cant of the worst kind?
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Can we separate duty towards God from duty towards our neighbours?
Yet here are men who preach and pray, while they look on such things
as matters of course, laying the blame upon natural laws, upon human
nature, and upon the ordinances of the Creator. Is it not cant and
blasphemy of the worst kind? How can people love a God whom they
believe responsible for these things — who has made a world
in which only a few of His creatures could live comfortably —
a world in which the great masses have to strain and strive all
their lives away to keep above starvation point? It is not the fault
of God! It is due to the selfishness and ignorance of humanity.
And when you come to ask the reason for this state of things, if
you seek it out, you will come at last, I believe, to the great
fact, that the land on which and from which it was ordained that
all humanity must live has been made the private property of a few
of their number. This is the only adequate explanation. Humans are
land animals. All their substance must be drawn from the land. They
cannot even take the birds of the air or fish in the sea without
the use of the land or the materials drawn from the land. Their
very bodies are drawn from the land. Take from a human all that
belongs to land, and you would have but a disembodied spirit. And
as land is absolutely necessary to the life of humanity, and as
land is the source from which all wealth is drawn, those humans
who command the land, on which and from which other humans live,
command those people.
Take the opposite course; trace up the fads.
Why is it that people are crowded together so in Glasgow? Because
you let dogs-in-the-manger hold the land on which these people ought
to live. Here is one fact that I happened to see in a communication
in one of your papers recently. There is a field in Glasgow called
Burnbank, comprising fourteen acres, worth £90,000 —
it is surrounded by houses — and ought to be used for buildings.
But the owner is holding it till he can get a higher price from
the necessities of the community. You let him hold it. You don’t
charge any taxes for it. The taxation you put upon the houses. The
same article says, if that field were covered with houses, these
houses would pay not less than £7,000 a year in taxation.
You charge and fine a person who puts up a house that would give
accommodation to the people, yet the person who holds land without
making any use of it you do not charge a penny for the privilege.
How can there be any doubt as to the reason why you are so crowded
together? Or, take the fact that wages are so low; that men are
competing with one another so eagerly for employment that wages
are brought down to starvation rates. What is the reason? Simply
that men are denied natural opportunities of employment.
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This city of Glasgow has been crowded with people
driven from Ireland and your Highlands where they were living. When
I was over in Ireland two years ago I saw the process. I followed
some of those red-coated evicting armies, and saw how, at the behest
of men who had never set foot in Ireland, the military forces of
the Empire were being used to turn out poor people from the cabins
and the land on which their fathers had lived from time immemorial.
Where were they forced to go? Into cities to obtain work at any
price. That great man who has stood on this platform, Michael Davitt,
is one of that class. His mother, forced from her home, carried
him around begging, rather than go to the almshouse; and coming
over here, he had, at an early age, when he ought to have been at
play and at school, and not at work, to enter one of your factories,
and that empty sleeve on his right side is a memento of that tyranny.
Thus is your labour market crowded with people who must get work
or starve, who cannot employ themselves, who are forced into competition
for anything they can get. So with your own people — the people
of Scotland. They have been crowded here in the same way. There
is the explanation. This is the explanation of the fact that, although
during this century, by reason of invention and improved methods,
the productive power of labour has increased so wonderfully, wages
have not increased at all save where trades unions have been formed
and have been able to force them up a little. I have now seen something
of Scotland, and let me tell you frankly that what I have seen does
not raise my estimate of the Scottish character. Let me tell you
frankly — seeing I have been accused of flattering you, and
you say you can stand unpleasant truths — I have a good deal
more respect for the Irish. The Irish have done some kicking against
this infernal system, and you men in Scotland have got it yet to
do.
The Scots are a logical people, as my friend
says. I won’t gainsay that; but their major premise must be
a very curious one. I have really been wondering, since I have been
in Scotland, whether you have not got things mixed a little. The
Scots are a Bible-reading people. I have sometimes wondered whether,
instead of reading “In the beginning the Lord created the
heavens and the earth” they haven’t got “In the
beginning the lairds created the heavens and the earth.” Certainly
the lairds have it all their own way through Scotland. Theirs is
the land and all upon it; theirs is all that is beneath the land;
theirs are the fishes in the rivers and in the lochs; theirs are
the birds of the air; theirs are the salmon in the sea, even the
seaweed that is thrown ashore, even the whales over a certain length,
even the driftwood? Theirs are even the water and the air. Why,
in Dundee, do you know, the people there, in order to get water,
had to pay £25,000 to the Earl of Airlie for the privilege
of drawing water for their use out of a certain loch. The water
alone; he retains the right to the fish. The very rain as it descends
from heaven is the property of the Laird of Airlie! Why, just think
of it! You know how that the chosen people were passing through
the wilderness and they thirsted, and Moses struck the rock and
the water gushed forth. What good would it have done if that rock
had been private property, and some Earl of Airlie had been there
who would say: “You cannot take a cupful until you pay me
£25,000?” And this Earl of Airlie does not live in Scotland
at all — at any rate, he does not live in Dundee! He never
drinks a cupful of that water. Why — just think of it; here,
when you have dry weather, the preachers pray for rain, and then
when the good Lord listens to their prayer, and sends it down, it
belongs to the Earl of Airlie!
But the people of Scotland have the air —
that is, what they can get in the streets and the roads! There is
at Dundee a hill they call Balgay. It was never cultivated, and
the only thing about it is that there is good air to be obtained
there, also fine views. That hill belongs to a non-resident. I think
the man’s name is Scott, and he lives in Edinburgh. The people
of Dundee want to take their walks on that hill. How do they get
that privilege? By paying him a rent of £14 per acre! Talk
about the taboo! Do you remember those superstitious South Sea Islanders
to whom we sent missionaries, and who are now dying out from rum
and disease? Do you know these people had a custom that they called
the taboo? Their high chiefs, whom they venerated as gods on earth
almost, could say of a certain thing: “That is tabooed,”
and one of the common sort dare not touch it or use it; he would
have to go around for miles rather than set his foot on a tabooed
path, go thirsty rather than drink at a tabooed spring, and go hungry
though fruit on a tabooed tree was rotting before his eyes. You
have just precisely the same thing here. There are miles and miles
of this Scotland of yours — that is, the Scotland that you
common Scotsmen call your country — that is, the Scotland
for which you are told you ought to lay down your lives if necessary
— there are miles and miles of it in a state of nature, which
one of you common Scotsmen dare not set his foot on.
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There is one of my countrymen — an American
named Williams — who made a great deal of money in Russia;
he comes over here and has a playground stretching from sea to sea,
in a state of nature, tenanted by wild animals, and from which every
one of you Scotsmen is rigorously excluded. And that is only an
example of the country all over. If you were heathens, if you were
savages, many of you would be far better off. People would not have
to live on oatmeal and potatoes while the streams were flashing
with fish and the moors were alive with game. Ail the fish are preserved.
I got hold of a book the other day, The Streams and Lochs of Scotland,
and I had the curiosity to look over it. Why, every bit of water
in which you can paddle a tub is preserved; it belongs to Lord This,
or Lady That, or Sir Somebody Else. And the quail! Why, to go back
to what I was just talking about. You remember how, to feed the
hungry Israelites, quail were sent from heaven. If they had been
sent into Scotland, you common Scots would not have dared to touch
them. Here the quail are preserved. Why, through the country that
I have been, the common, ordinary working Scots live on potatoes,
and are well off when they get salted herrings or a little oatmeal.
If the potato rot were to come, you would have just such a famine
as occurred in Ireland in 1848. In point of fact, this year there
is on the Island of Skye a crop of potatoes only by the charity
or the people who subscribed to the destitution fund, and so furnished
those people with seed.
Full-fed, comfortable people, who eat hearty
dinners every day, professors of universities with good salaries,
gentlemen with nice steady incomes and pensions, say: “Oh,
everything is going right; the working classes are getting better
off’; and they deny most bitterly the assertion that poverty
is keeping pace with progress, and they give you long tables of
statistics to prove it. Everywhere that I have been I have asked
the working people themselves what they thought, and I found everywhere
that the very reverse was their opinion. Certainly, after going
through this country, there can be no question that all this progress
and civilisation has only ground this people lower down, that they
were better off hundreds of years ago when they were half-heathen
savages. They have now been driven from the good land they used
to cultivate, and have been forced upon poor land. Their little
holdings have been curtailed, so that they cannot keep enough stock
to pay their rent. The rent has been increased and increased, and
their only way of paying it is to trench upon their revenue and
sell off their stock. There are places where they used to fish,
where they have become so impoverished that they now have no fishing
boats. There are places where they used to have horses, where now
they have none, and where women — Scottish women — have
to do the work of beasts of burden! You can see them today carrying
manure and everything else on their backs.
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Go to the Highlands and you will see a state
of society — of industrial society — that belongs to
past centuries. You will find people cultivating the ground with
the old-fashioned ‘crookit spade’ reaping with a hook,
and beating out their little harvest of corn with a flail. Civilisation
has done nothing for them save to make life harder. Those people,
large numbers of them, have to pay rents which they cannot possibly
get out of the ground. They are forced to go fishing, or to come
down to the Lowlands to seek work, in order to get money to pay
their rents. It is not merely for the ground they are charged, not
merely for the virtues of the soil; they are charged for a mere
breathing space, a mere living place. Yet those people who live
in that way are called lazy! Lazy! I would like to have some of
those well-fed people who talk about the crofters’ laziness
go up and take a week of that sort of work. Let these men go up
and dig a little with the crookit spade, and then go out and face
the rough sea in one of those fishing boats; and let those fine
ladies go to the Highlands and carry turf on their backs as the
women do there. As far as I learned when there, it takes, on the
average, about one person’s labour to keep up these miserable
peat fires in the centre of the hut. As for flowers; since I have
been in Scotland I have never seen a single flower around one of
those miserable cabins, where most of the people live. I asked one
crofter in Glendale if they had ever any fruit. “Well,”
he said: “They used to have some kail.”
Struggle to pay the rent I went, as Americans
would say, to the jumping-off place — to John o’Groat’s.
There I saw two very bright fellows bringing up stones from the
seashore. One of them stooped down upon his knees to help me to
hunt for ‘groatie buckies’, and we had a talk. He said
he was going to build a house. The gentleman who was with me asked
if he had any surety in building it except the word of his landlord?
He said he was a good landlord. I asked: “How much have you
to spare?” I think he said £5. His father lived there,
and there were other two sons. I asked: “What do you make
out of it?” One of them said: “We generally get the
meal.” I said, “Do you get enough to pay your rent?”
“No; we have got to make it up. I go off to the fishing, and
my brother goes off to work. Sometimes we get enough to pay the
rent, but generally we don’t.” I said, “The goodness
of this good, kind landlord of yours amounts to this, that he lets
you live there, and takes from you all that you make, save just
enough to live.” He said: “That is just about so.”
But then he said, “He is really better than many other landlords.”
Well, so he is; some of those landlords are there skinning the people
alive.
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It is not the crofters who have the worst lot
— it is the cottars, who come under the tacks men. The crofter
can only be put out once a year; the cottar can be put out at forty-eight
hours notice. The cottars are the absolute slaves of the tacks men.
There is just as much slavery as there existed in any land where
human flesh was bought and sold. Why, there was the testimony before
the Royal Commission. By-the- by, that Royal Commission —
to a man who does not know anything about it — looks like
a committee of wolves to investigate the condition of the sheep.
I would like to see labouring people represented on some of these
commissions. Anyhow, a very intelligent Gaelic witness said all
the land he had was for a cabin and the grass for a cow. Lord Napier
asked how much rent he paid. He replied £5. The Commission
did not believe it — it seemed so incredible. They said: “How
do you pay it?” He replied: “I work a 100 days in the
year at 1/- a day.” Is it any wonder that wages are low in
your city when that is the state of labour in the outskirts?
Poverty and destitution! There is enough to
make you sick at heart if you listen to it. Why, a banker in the
Highlands told me that only last week a young fellow had come to
him who he knew was an honest, sober, industrious, hardworking man,
and a cottar, and asked him for the loan of a couple of pounds.
“Well,” the banker said: “I can’t lend you
that as a matter of business. What is the matter?” The man
replied: “I don’t know where to get anything to eat;
myself, my wife, and four children have had nothing but potatoes
for over two months, and not enough of them; and now there is not
a particle of food in the house. All I have in the world is a cow
and a stirk. If I sell them now, I can get nothing for them. If
you lend me this money, I will sell the stirk at the term time and
give it back to you. My friendly informant said: “I will give
you so much meal, enough to keep you” — I forget how
much, so many stones you call it — “to last you up till
the time, and bring the money when you sell the stirk.” The
man dropped down and burst into a flood of tears. My informant said
to me: “I never felt so humiliated in my life as to see a
human creature, a fellow man driven to such a pinch.” And
then he said: “The man told me: ‘You don’t know
what anguish I have suffered. Morning after morning I have seen
my little children going to school fearing they would fall down
from sheer weakness on the road.”’
And the treatment of the poor — the poor
broken creatures who have nothing of their own — is something
outrageous. This endeavour to keep down the poor rates! Do you know
that in some of these parishes there are poor decrepit creatures
who get an allowance of 2/- a month, and in other places 14 lbs
of meal for two weeks? Well, I asked, over and over again: “How
do they live? They can’t live on that.” What they live
on is the charity of the poor people. The landlords, the rich farmers,
shunt this burden of providing for the poor that their rapacity
creates upon the hardworking people, who themselves can hardly keep
from starvation. One of the London papers said, jeering at me, that
I proposed to take all the property from the landowners, and they
supposed, however, I was very kind — I would send them to
the almshouse. Well, now, I wish — I have no ill-will towards
them — but I heartily wish that a lot of your ruling classes
could be sent to the almshouse. I think if some dukes and duchesses
and earls and countesses were treated as these poor people are treated,
that the wickedness of it, the sheer cold-blooded barbarity of it,
would become apparent to your so-called Christian people. Utter
slavery! Why, as one man said to me: “We have feared the landlords
more than we have feared Almighty God, and we have feared the factor
as much as the landlord — perhaps even more — and the
ground-officer as much as the factor.” Why, they are absolutely
in their power.
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There is a case, I am told of, where the factor
was a fish merchant, and compelled the people to sell him the fish,
and fined them Li if they sold the fish to anybody else. Why, a
gentleman was telling me — a professional man — how
he had ridden, just a week or two ago around with the factor on
the estate of one of your members of Parliament. They came up to
a man, and the factor said to him: “Look here, why were not
your children at school yesterday?” Well, the man sheepishly
replied, and the factor said: “Look here, don’t you
allow that to happen again. See that they are at school.”
“Yes, your honour,” the man replied. ‘Heavens
and earth, how can you talk to a man like that?” said the
professional man, and the factor said: “I can make him toe
the mark; I have plenty of power.” Why, take the Island of
Skye, the factor there is everything except the parish minister.
I spoke at Portree the other evening. I went up there, and some
of the inhabitants came to me, like Nicodemus, at night, and said:
“You must not leave Portree without speaking here.”
I said that I did not want to thrust myself upon them, but if they
secured a hall I would speak. They went away, and by and by they
came back and said: “There is not one of us who has the courage
to ask for a hall.” They were afraid, and I said: “I
will take the whole responsibility, and offer myself, if need be,
a vote of thanks.” I wrote a letter to the factor. I suppose
you have heard of that factor — Mr McDonald, I think his name
is. He is Justice of the Peace and everything else, and he has charge
of the only hall there. I wrote him a polite note, stating that
some of the people wanted me to speak on the land question. He wrote
back to me to say that he could not let the hall for a lecture;
he could not take the responsibility without consulting all the
proprietors. Anyway, we got a schoolhouse. A clergyman at the head
of the school board was good enough to grant the use of a schoolhouse,
although there were threats of interdicts and other terrible things
made against him.
I remember reading in an English book, written
some years ago, about an aristocratic Pole in the old times, who
took an English traveller over some of his ground, and pointed at
some miserable-looking objects. He told the traveller he could kick
any of them he wanted to. It was much like that in Scotland today.
Your aristocracy take a pride in all that sort of thing. They like
to keep up those Highland romantic notions, the feather bonnet and
the kilt, and all that sort of thing. Well, now, really when you
come to think of it, those Scottish Highlanders have been an ideal
people with the aristocracy. They fight like lions abroad, and they
have been taken abroad at the dictate of the very power which has
oppressed them, to rob and plunder, and kill other people; but they
are as tame as sheep at home. Don’t you think that alongside
of the Scottish lion you ought to put a Scottish sheep? There is
one thing that has greatly displeased me. The most displeasing thing
I saw in Ireland was the police force — the Royal Irish Constabulary.
Well, now, you are keeping up here in Scotland an institution very
much the same. When I was in Skye I saw policemen loafing around
just as the Irish Constabulary loaf about. In a little bit of a
village named Dunvegan, where I don’t think there are more
than six or seven houses, there are two policemen, all in uniform.
The police of the County of Inverness have been increased by fifty,
at a cost of £3,000 to the ratepayers, and £3,000 more
to the whole country, on account of the fears of the landlords.
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I have been pointing out the evil. How can it
be cured? Well, it cannot be cured by any halfway measures; it cannot
be cured by any measures that will be agreeable to your aristocracy.
You know that at the beginning of big sheep farming in the Highlands,
and the eviction of their brethren by chiefs who had become landowners
under an infamous English law, there was a good deal of misery,
and one of the earliest measures to relieve that misery was to get
up those Highland regiments. They were got up about the time of
the American war, and a lot of them were sent over there to fight
the American. people. You can’t relieve poverty by any such
measures as that. In the beginning of the century, when the Duke
of Sutherland and other men of that kind were evicting their people
with a barbarity that will hardly find a parallel in the annals
of savage warfare, there was another measure got up to relieve the
destitution — that was the making of the roads. Some £267,000
of public money, in addition to £5,000 a year from the public
funds, was, for many years, spent on making roads through the Highlands;
but this grant was finally abandoned, on the ground that all it
had done was to improve the rents of the Highland landlords. No
such measures as that will relieve poverty. You cannot get rid of
it by such measures as you Glasgow people adopted in your City Improvement
Trust. You have taxed the masses of the people only to foster corruption;
to put large sums into the pockets of speculators and landlords;
to improve the property of other landowners; and you have not a
whit relieved overcrowding or destitution. You have simply changed
the place of the disease. It is like putting a plaster on a cancer
and driving it somewhere else.
You cannot cure this deep-seated disease by any
such measures as these; you must go to the root, boldly and firmly.
Take no stock of those people who preach moderation. Moderation
is not what is needed; it is religious indignation. Grasp your thistle.
Take this wild beast by the throat. Proclaim the grand truth that
every human being born in Scotland has an inalienable and equal
right to the soil of Scotland — a right that no law can do
away with; a right that comes direct from the Creator, who made
earth for humankind; and placed man and woman upon the earth. You
cannot divide land and secure equality. It could be secured among
a primitive people, such as the children of Israel, who, under the
Mosaic law, divided the land; but in our complex civilisation that
cannot be done. It is not necessary to divide the land, when you
can divide the income drawn from the land. You can easily take the
revenue that comes from the land for public purposes. There is nothing
very radical in this; it is a highly Conservative proposition. Why,
I had the pleasure of reading a speech delivered in this Hall by
your member, Dr Cameron, proposing substantially the same thing.
Dr Cameron and myself, I am glad to say, stand upon the same platform
in this respect. He wants to re-establish the old, ancient tax upon
land that the landowners have thrown upon the masses of the people.
That is what I want to do; and when we have done that, I want to
go a little further, but I have no doubt that Dr Cameron, when he
had got so far, would be quite willing to go a little further. The
real fight will come on some such proposition as that made by Dr
Cameron, and I have not the shadow of a doubt that, if the people
do their duty, the landlords will be routed — horse, foot,
and dragoons.
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There Is No Natural Reason for Poverty
Now, see the absurdity of the present system,
even as a great economic measure. Here, in Glasgow, take that field
of Burnbank. The owner allows it to be vacant, and pays nothing;
but if he puts houses upon it you will then get £7,000 a year
in taxation. Have you got enough houses in Glasgow? Why should you
tax houses and not land? The person who puts up houses is a public
benefactor. The more you tax houses, the less houses you have. But
you may tax the value of land 20 shillings to the pound and you
will not have an inch less land. A good part of this city used to
belong to your people. It was purchased by a Lord Provost named
Campbell. I don’t know how he got it. It reminds me of the
story I heard in Cardiff, how an ancestor of the Marquis of Bute
got a great part of the common of that town — now most valuable
property. A predecessor of Lord Bute gave the freemen a dinner every
year. In a fit of generosity they voted the common tohim; but he
did not continue the dinner. I don’t know how the Lord Provost
got this property. But I am informed he paid £1,500 for it.
Now, his successor, Sir Archibald Campbell, draws £30,000
in feu-duties, and he does not pay a penny of the rates of the town.
Would it not be better to take that £30,000 in taxation, and
remit your taxes on some other things?
I want to call your attention to what an enormous
fund you would get for public purposes in this way. The chief advantage
of putting taxes upon land is that you would choke off those dogs-in-the-manger,
who are now holding the land without using it, or making deer forests
of what ought to be the homes of people; who, that they may compel
a larger blackmail, are withholding land around your towns from
building uses, while whole families are crowded in four-storied
houses, a family to each room. A great stimulus would be given to
industry, to the investment of capital, to production of all kinds,
by the removal of the taxes that weigh and press them down. And
by taking that which goes to the landowner and using it for public
uses, you could establish libraries and museums, and public parks,
and gardens, and baths, if you chose, in every town; you could all
around this coast build safe harbours for your fishermen; and you
could give a pension of enough to live comfortably on to every decrepit
person. Preposterous does it seem? Well, it does — this thing
of doing anything for the common people. It is highly demoralising,
we are told, to give people something for nothing. You don’t
hear anything about that when individual pensions are granted up
to thousands of pounds. Your parliament votes £25,000 a year
to a young prince as though it were nothing at all. Judges, officers,
and that sort of thing, get most handsome retiring pensions. It
doesn’t hurt them, it doesn’t demoralise them! And see
how enormously your other expenses would be reduced. Why, I saw
in an office today a chart showing the expenses of this nation diagrammed,
and, according to that chart, it was nearly all for war, and the
cost of war, and preparation for war. You have been warring with
other people, and out of the present taxes, according to that chart,
you pay 16/9, I think a year, for war, the expense of war, and the
costs of war, and 3/3 for other expenses. Why is that expense placed
upon you? Because you are governed by a landowning aristocracy.
The army is a good place for younger sons. You have been governed
by the class that likes to make war, and that finds a profit in
making war. With the rule of the people that would cease.
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There is enough here for all of us. There is
no natural reason for poverty, or even for hard work. The inventions
and discoveries that have been already made give humankind such
a command over material conditions, that we all could live in ease
and luxury if we did not scramble and tread each other underfoot.
Once give the people an opportunity, give mind a chance to develop,
and the forces of production would increase at a rate never dreamed
of. Where wages are highest, there is labour always most productive,
there is invention most active. And certainly it is time that something
were done. Why, think if one of us, having a family of children,
were to go away from home, and come back and find the big ones leaving
the liffle ones out in the cold, keeping them in ignorance, in squalor
and misery and disease — what would we say? Do you believe
that the laws of justice can be outraged with impunity? Not so,
The whole history of the world shows that, though, on the narrow
scale of individual life and individual action, injustice sometimes
seemed to succeed, yet on the great scale of national life, the
punishment of national crimes always comes sure and certain. And,
so sure as God lives, that punishment must overtake such nations
as this. The cry of the oppressed cannot go up for ever and ever
without bringing down punishment. Look back at the greatest nation
that ever played its part on this world’s stage — Imperial
Rome. What was its fate? That very fate may be seen coming over
this nation today. Italy, when the Roman power went forth to conquer
the world, was the home of hardy husbandmen, independent and self-reliant.
As fortunes grew, these men were drained off to the wars, evicted,
driven out, and Italy was given up to sheep and cattle and great
estates. That very same thing is going on in these islands today.
What was Scotland made for? What was this earth
made for? Was it not for humankind? Was not humankind given the
dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field?
Was it not made humanity’s duty to subdue the earth? Is not
humanity the highest thing that earth can produce? And yet here,
in this Scotland, you are driving off people and putting on beasts,
and the vengeance is coming. We know something of the laws of the
universe. We do not yet know them all. But there is a strange thing
that has been noticed in new countries, and that is the influence
that people seem to have by their mere presence upon nature. The
bee follows the pioneer across the American continent; where settlements
are made more rain seems to fall, new flowers without planting seem
to spring up, and the earth to bring forth more abundantly; and,
where people retire, nature becomes more savage. See how in Italy
fertile districts, when depopulated, became the haunts of fever.
Look to the arid wastes of North Africa, once such a teeming hive
of population.
People who love Scotland, arise! The very same
thing can be seen in Scotland today. Upon this land the curse that
follows the expulsion of people is coming. People have been driven
off the richest and best land, and the sites of their little homes
and their little cultivated fields given up to sheep, and the sheep
fattened. It was good grass where the people had been. That, everywhere,
I learn, is giving way. I am told by capable authorities that where
a thousand sheep twenty or thirty years ago could be kept, in places
people had been driven off not 700 can be kept now. There is a fungus
moss creeping over the ground; Scotland is relapsing into barbarism
again; even sheep are giving way to the solitude of the deer forest
amid the grouse moor. Will you, people who love Scotland, let it
go on?
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The address concluded, the chairman intimated
that any person present would now have an opportunity of putting
questions. The following questions were asked and answered.
Q: Why does Mr George address
meetings in large cities instead of among the farmers and farm labourers
— the large cities being centres of commerce, and their inhabitants
having no interest in the question?
A: Because I think it is in
large cities that the evils of land monopoly are best seen, and
it is to the large cities that I look for the force that is to reform
these evils. Those poor cowed people in the Highlands, trembling
under the eyes of their factors, what can they do for themselves?
It is to you people of the cities that I mainly and principally
look. The towns must carry the standard of advancement, as they
always do.
Q: How would nationalisation
of the land tend to raise wages or shorten the hours of labour of
the city artisan?
A: I do not propose nationalisation
of the land, but to nationalise land values by collecting the rental
value of land for the nation. That would open to labour the primary
source of all employment. Why are wages, generally speaking, in
new countries higher than in old countries? Adam Smith, a hundred
years ago, stated the reason when he said it was because there land
was cheap — because people can there work for themselves,
and therefore will not work for anybody for less than they can earn
for themselves. When you open up the land, you relieve the pressure
on every industry. It is the pioneers in a new country who furnish
the foundation and market for all the others. First you have the
herdsmen and farmers, and afterwards you have the operatives. It
is sometimes said we all cannot be farmers; but that is the only
thing we all can be. We all might be farmers, because communities
have existed in which everybody was a farmer; but you never heard
of a community where everybody was a tailor. It is not necessary,
however, for us all to be farmers. But if we break up the monopoly
of land, so that in the primary occupations there will be easy employment
and high wages, then there will be a brisk demand for labour and
high wages in all employments.
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Q: If Mr George would not tax
labour products, and if the rent of the agricultural and grass land
is only about 66 million per year — 56 million of this amount
being a rent imposed upon the labour of the farmer — would
he explain to us how he proposes to abolish the existing poverty
with the paltry sum of ten million which remains?
A: The landlords are very anxious
to show how little they get. Mr Mallock has made a coloured diagram
in which he pictures it as only £100,000,000. If it is so
little, what is the use of making a fuss about it. The fact is,
that it is an enormous sum. The agricultural rent is put at £6o,ooo,ooo,
but that is the smallest part of the rent. The rents of towns and
cities and mineral lands ought to be at least twice as much. Nor
in these estimates is everything given. It is merely rent received
by the landlords. There may be feued ground that pays 20/-, and
which the growth of the city has made worth £10 or £20.
All that is rent. The Duke of Westminster gets, besides the rent,
all the buildings upon his estates in London at the expiration of
the leases. The rent of these kingdoms is at least two hundred million
pounds — enough to pay all your legitimate expenditure, and
all your extravagant expenditure in some directions, and a great
deal more, and at the same time giving labour a chance.
Q: If it be unjust to hold private
property in land, is it not equally unjust to build a private house
upon land, seeing that to build a house upon land is putting a portion
of the people’s earth to private uses, and excluding every
one except the owner of the house from the use of that portion of
the earth?
A: That question is on a par
with what you will find in the reviews of your best newspapers:
it must come from the editor of one of your leading dailies. If
a person takes a fish out of the sea, the fish is properly his private
property; but that fact does not necessitate giving that person
the sea as private property. So with the person who builds a house.
The house is the private property of the one who built it, and should
not be taxed. But this person should pay to the community the rental
value of the land on which the house is built. That is equitable.
Q: Would not the abolishing
of taxes benefit the large merchants of a city rather than the artisans
or labouring classes?
A: No; I don’t think
so. The greatest benefits would be to the labouring classes. The
incidence of taxation, as now laid, benefits the capitalist, or
the man who has most money. The making of liquor has been concentrated,
and distillers have built up great fortunes over in Ireland. The
distillers are the men who renovate and build churches. It is the
same with all sorts of business. We have in our country, more than
in yours, a protective tariff. The duties are paid primarily by
the importers. Do you think you can get them to work for free trade?
On the contrary, they profit by the duties, as their effect in increasing
the amount of capital required for the business keeps competitors
out. The effect of all these taxes is to concentrate business in
the hands of capitalists. Now, it is said, why attack the landlord
alone; why not go for the capitalist? The capitalist, as a capitalist,
is doing nobody any harm. What harm is done by the capitalist is
as a monopolist. It is the monopoly that you want to destroy. Now,
we find when a person has a great sum of money, this power is, in
the phrase of the Socialists, used in exploiting labour. Where does
this power come from? Suppose I take a million pounds and go into
a country where people can earn for themselves £1 a day and
put up my big factory. Can I get anybody to work for less than £1
a day? No indeed. It is because people are impoverished that they
are forced to compete with each other for starvation wages. Suppose
every family had, as it well might have, its own house and garden,
enough to live on, would you find people working for a few shillings
a week? You can see where the pressure comes from. One millstone
cannot grind. It requires two, the nether millstone as well as the
upper millstone.
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Q: Supposing the rent
of the land was paid to the state, instead of to the private owner,
would it make any difference?
A: It might not make any
difference in the rent, but it would make a very great difference
to the people who paid the rent, and to the community. That question
was answered in a London newspaper in another way by my friend Mr
Joynes. A man wrote, and asked what difference was it to the farmer
whether he paid his rent to the state, or whether he paid it to
the landowners? He said this was the difference: that the state
was not likely to go to the continent, or go off in its yacht and
spend it; that it would be spent for the general good. As to the
amount of rent levied; it would not be just to the rest of the people
to make rents low. Every rent ought to be a proper rent, as much
as the land is worth, because that is the only way of securing equality.
There’s the mistake our friends in Ireland have made. They
have gone and turned that great agitation into a miserable little
thing for the tenant-farmers. Now, the tenant-farmers are not entitled
to a whit more favour than any other class in the community. The
class to look to, I:he class to strive for, is the lowest class
— not the farmer, but the labourer. The labourer is the one.
Improve the condition of people who have nothing but their hands,
and you improve the condition of the whole community.
Q: Does Mr George propose
to confiscate the interest on bonds held by widows and orphans,
which absorbs a large part of the income of land?
A: I would propose to
confiscate the whole value of the land.
Q: Well, what I refer
to belongs to widows and orphans.
A: Do not be deluded by
this widow and orphan business. That is a maUer that is always put
to the front. When people talked about abolishing slavery in my
country, the cry was raised about the widow and the orphan. It was
said: “Here is a poor widow woman who has only two or three
slaves to live upon; would you take them away?” It reminds
me of the story of the litfie girl who was taken to see a picture
of Daniel in the lions’ den. She began to cry very bitterly,
and her mother said: “Do not cry, do not cry. God will take
care that no harm will befall him.” To which she replied:
“I ain’t crying for him, but for the poor litfie lion
at the back — he is so liffle; I am afraid he won’t
get any.” Now, as to the widow and the orphan: in the state
of society which would ensue from breaking up land monopoly, no
one need fear that the helpless ones left behind would come to want.
This is not the case now. Take your Duke of Argyll or Duke of Sutherland
— their descendants will yet be tenanting your alms-houses.
John o’ Groat was sent by one of your kings up to Caithness,
and made a rich laird. But the lot of the o’ Groats now existing
there is just as poor and miserable as any people there. The best
blood of England, as it is called, runs in the almshouses. How much
better it would be for the richest man to know that he left his
widow and children in a state of society where they could not possibly
want, where all the influences around them were healthy, than in
such a state of society as this! Why, look at its moral aspects.
The vice and disease that are bred of poverty, do they rest merely
with the poor people? No; they climb up through the ranks of the
rich to the highest.
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Q: If Mr George would
abolish ownership in land, what compensation would he give to those
owners of land who have acquired it by purchase, sanctioned by existing
law?
A: I would not give them
a penny. I don’t think this matter of compensation comes into
practical politics. Why should you make any discrimination between
a man who purchased his land, and a man who did not purchase it?
Does it make much difference whether I am the robber or I bought
the thing of the robber? Supposing I was big enough to steal one
of you, and run you off to a country where I could hold you as my
slave. You would have a moral right to get away from me as soon
as you could; but would that moral right cease the moment I had
sold you to somebody else? If you were to say we will recompense
anybody who can show that they bought their land, what would be
the result? Why, by the time you came to take the land values, everybody
would have sold the land to somebody else. A gentleman said to me
tonight: “Oh, Scotsmen will not hear of anything else but
compensation. “I don’t believe that. I have a very much
higher notion of Scotsmen than that. I believe the Scots are too
logical a people to tolerate the idea of compensation. I will tell
you a story I heard about this matter of compensation. There was
one of your Highland lairds — a Gordon something or other
— in a railway train with a gentleman, and he was talking
about these wicked ideas that were floating about. The gentleman
said to him: “How did you get your land?” He said: “We
got our land by bringing our men into the field to fight for the
country.” The gentleman said to him, “What did the men
get?” Well, he had to admit that the men had not got anything.
“But,” he said: “We have had the land for a long
time, and sanctioned by law. It would be robbery to deprive us of
it.” The other gentleman asked: “How long have you had
it?” ‘We have had it for 800 years.” “Well,”
the gentleman said: “If you have had it for 800 years, don’t
you think you have had it long enough?” Compensation is preposterous.
Why, all titles to land are nothing but robbers’ titles, and
the titles to a large part of the land in Scotland are a great deal
worse than robbers’ titles. They are not titles won by the
strong hand or by conquest. They are rather the titles of the sneak
thief, or worse. These Highland chiefs betrayed their brethren by
taking advantage of a language and a law that their brethren did
not understand. They were won by treachery and treason. I don’t
propose to go back into inquiries of that sort, because, to my mind,
it makes no difference how a person got the land. It may be said
that a person bought land. Supposing one bought the sun? Could one
buy it from anyone who had the right to sell it? But where do these
titles come from? Has one generation, supposing they were all united,
the right to sell the rights of the coming generation? This earth
belongs to all generations. You people have carried in a certain
direction compensation to the extreme of absurdity, but it has always
been compensation to the ruling classes. You paid the descendants
of Charles the Second’s illegitimate children compensation
for hereditary pensions and taxes, and you paid enormous sums to
buy out the hereditary jurisdiction of your Highland chiefs. For
every sinecure held by one of the ruling classes a Highland chief
gets compensation, but you never hear of a poor person being compensated.
How much were the people compensated when the taxation was taken
off the land and put upon labour? Why should you compensate the
landlords? The only reason is that you have been doing it for a
long time. Nobody proposes to take anything from the landlords.
I would give all their full equal share. It is not proposed to take
anything from the landlords; it is merely to stop them from taking
from other people.
Q: What about recently
acquired land?
A: Treat it in the same
way. Supposing the land was acquired by purchase; is it not the
principle of law that the buyer can get no better title than the
seller has to give? If a person has no right to the land, how can
that person give another the right to it? As a matter of fact, you
would do no injury by laying down that principle. No one could be
hurt by the resumption of the land as common property, save those
who could well afford to have their incomes lessened. The person
of small means who had got a house and lot would be the direct gainer
by the change which would exempt houses from taxation, and put it
upon lots, while being an enormous gainer by the increase of wealth
and the rise in wages. Then the businessmen who are landowners would
profit by the improvement and stimulation of the productive energies
of society far more than they would lose as landlords. The typical
landlord is the man who goes to the Mediterranean in a yacht, and
spends the money which he draws from the toil of the people here.
Or, like that Dublin man, known as ‘Cosey’ Murphy, who
practically went to bed for seven years. At the end of that time
he woke to find himself twice as wealthy as when he went to bed.
‘Cosey’ Murphy was, of’course, a landowner. Without
any effort on his part, the progress and activity of the community
increased the value of the land he held, and that is how he grew
wealthy while he slept. Consider, the real thing that would be taken
from the people who demand compensation is not land, but the power
which the possession of land now gives them of levying tolls upon
the labour of others. What does the Duke of Sutherland want with
his twelve hundred thousand acres; or the Duke of Westminster with
his London estates? No more than the Earl of Alrlie wants with the
water that he sold. They want to have the privilege of taking the
wealth of the people who have produced it. That is a right that
no one can have. That is a power that can be sanctioned by no purchase,
and for which no one can justly ask compensation.
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Q: Suppose a man was induced
by our land laws to invest £100 in land. He might have invested
the money in any other commercial enterprise. Would Mr George compensate
the man who had lost his money by the so-called pernicious land
laws?
A: I would not. [A voice:
“You will not do for Scotland!” Second voice: “Keep
quiet, you fool! Do you speak for Scotland?”] If a man invests
a gold sovereign in a bad Bank of England note, I would not reimburse
him. If a man invests a hundred pounds in slaves, I would not reimburse
him. [A voice: “We compensated the West Indian slaveholders.”]
A very wicked thing it was. I hope you will not do so again. You
shunted the loss which the slaveowner ought to have incurred upon
the backs of the working classes of this country. You did worse.
You strengthened slavery all over the world; you taught the American
slaveholder to believe that, if abolition should come, he would
get a price for his human property. Up to the verge of the war slaves
commanded as high a price as ever they did. If, on the contrary,
that agitation had continued on the basis of absolute emancipation,
the thing would have been gradual. The value of slaves would have
declined. Men would not have bought and sold them. Now, the same
is true in this. I want to do this at 10 o’clock tomorrow
morning; but if we all wanted to do it, it would take a good while.
It necessarily must be a progressive step. We must necessarily,
on account of the resistance, move step by step. And as we do this
the landowners will have a chance; your recent purchaser will have
a chance not to purchase. The decline would be slow and gradual.
Q: Why not begin at home?
A: Why not begin at home?
I am beginning at home. I don’t come over here to preach anything
I have not preached in my own country. The very conditions that
I have been speaking to you about I have seen growing upon new soil,
and it was because of that that my eyes were opened to it. Why not
begin at home? I am here beginning at home. We who speak this language
are on both sides of the Atlantic but one people becoming every
day more one. The agitation must go forward on both sides of the
Atlantic — by action and reaction. America must be affected
through England and Scotland, and England and Scotland will be affected
through America. Whatever we do, we do for this whole, great imperial
race — the race to whom the destiny of modern civilisation
is entrusted.
Q: Would you confiscate
all rent?
A: I would confiscate
all rent in the economic sense.
Q: Then, would you give
compensation for improvements? A: I do not propose to take the improvements,
but to let everything stand as it is now. The proposal is to take
the annual value of all land for the national revenue, and this
need not disturb anyone who holds land. If at any time a landholder
gives up possession there would certainly be an entitlement to compensation
for any improvements made by the landholder, and this would be paid
by the successor. There would be no confiscation of improvements.
It is the present system that is confiscatory. It is confiscating
labour every day. It is not a robbery that is done and passed away;
it is robbery that is going on every week and every month, every
day and every hour. It is a fresh robbery that is committed on every
child that comes into the world. Now, to go back to this matter
of compensation. Some people do propose to compensate. There are
some who propose to compensate all who can show that they have purchased
the land, at the price they gave for it, minus the net rent that
they have received. Then there is Miss Helen Taylor, the stepdaughter
of John Stuart Mill. She is also in favour of compensating everybody
who can show that they have purchased the land with the proceeds
of their labour. She proposes to make the landowners pay up with
interest, and compound interest, all the back taxes from the time
of Charles the Second, and then to take part of that money and compensate
the people who could show that they had purchased with their own
earnings! There are people who believe in compensation — compensation
not to the landowner, but to the people who have suffered. I would
cut the whole thing now. I should be perfectly willing to draw the
line at “let the past be the past”. If any one wants
to compensate landholders, they have a perfect right, so far as
they are concerned themselves to give compensation. They could make
a collection for them. You have a perfect right to do that, but
I deny the right of any individual to grant away the natural rights
of another individual. Be just before you attempt to be generous.
There is only one true basis of social reconstruction, and that
is the basis of justice!
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