THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN

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Not one of these machines could turn out a yard of woolen cloth except fed by wool from the backs of sheep that fed upon the lands. In the same way the cotton, silk and linen came from the land. Also, the increasing population in these rapidly growing cities must all be fed from products that grew upon the land, and even if people dwelt in five-story tenement-houses, or pursued their business in an office on the tenth floor, its foundation must rest upon the land.

The first effect, then, upon the farmer, was of great prosperity, since everything that he raised was in great demand. So well off did he soon become, that he refused to board the day-laborer in his family, since now he was as good as gentle folk; thus the gulf again widened between the classes. But the second effect was, that land being in such demand, its value rose enormously, and when the long leases expired, the landlords refused to rent again upon the old terms; so that all this increase in prosper­ity, though it went for a time to capital, for a time to the farmer, ended in raising the value of land, making it yearly harder either to buy land or to rent it, and those who owned the land reaped the cream of all this prosperity. A proof of this is seen in the fact that both wages and interest on capital are not nearly as high today as one hun­dred and fifty years ago, when compared with the amount of wealth they produced; yet the price of land is vastly higher; farming lands, some fifty times their former price; manufacturing sites, seventy times; mineral lands and city lots, many thousand times. So the final effect upon the farmer was, that since his extra profits must now go to pay the increased rent, the small farmer was crushed out, and became a day-laborer or small trader, again drawing more away from the country to the city, and gradually concentrating the land in the hands of a few. Slowly the sturdy yeomanry of Eng­land disappeared—that class which made England invincible in war and prosperous in peace. As this class has disappeared in England, the wealthy and retired merchant or manufacturer now coveted a title, but as this could "not be granted except to the possessor of broad lands, a bill was passed through parliament called the “Law of Inclosures,” inclosing the land held in common by the poor people.

By this some seven millions of acres of the common lands were “inclosed,” i.e. taken away from the poor and given to the rich to found (?) families, who did not pay the poor for their land, but who paid the government for their titles of nobility.

At length, so great was the distress and suffering in England, that riots were com­mon; houses and factories were burned; the sky was lurid with the approach of a com­ing revolution. The law of settlement was repealed in time to save coming disas­ter. Since then some twelve millions have found their way to the cheap or free lands of Canada and the United States, and have been able to protect themselves. But there is still poverty in England. They still give them scorn, pity, and charity; and if anyone will know the cause of the present submerged tenth, let him reflect upon this fact.

One-half the land of Great Britain—land upon which thirty-seven millions of people must live, is owned by some twenty-seven hundred landlords. The many must pay the few—their brothers, for a right to live upon England’s soil—pay for the right to live upon the land where God has placed them. Why if such were the;condition in Heaven there would be distress and suffering. Now’how do those times and events com­pare with the present? Against the steam-engine, the spinning jenny, the power loom, water frame and cheap iron, we have cheap steel, the electric motor, the reaping machine, ocean cable, telephone, photography, the modern printing-press, capable of printing a book of 288 pages in one revolution, or 5,000 books an hour! In short, so multitudinous are now the inventions that today only one-third of the labor of the world is performed by muscle.

Every new invention, in proportion to its importance, produces like economic results as have been detailed at length. First, it destroys somebody’s industry and makes some capital, for a time, useless; next, it changes the location of the social units of society. Then it increases the profits of those vvdio possess exclusive control of the invention; but as soon as exclusive control ceases, competition steps in and

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