ANOTHER WARNING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9308, 18 September 1893, Page 3

ANOTHER WARNING.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, Two significant incidents happened within the last few days : (1) On Friday you published the following cablegram :—" The Trades Union Congress at Belfast, representing nine hundred thousand men, by a twothirds majority, instructed the labour members in the House of Commons to support collective ownership, and control all means of production and distribution. Mr. John Burns says the instructions of the Trades Congress reach to the kernel of the social labour problem." (21 Single-taxers in Auckland have just begun to circulate here as Australian Democratic monthly, The Beacon, advocating their fad, and in the number dated August 11 found a Socialist writing as follows :—" Capital, however, equally with land, is an indispensable factor in production, and the appropriation of capital is just as indefensible as is the appropriation of land. Although land monopoly is always, and especially in seasons of commercial depression, an immediate and crying evil, it is really no worse than the corresponding monopoly of capital. If the land was all freed to-morrow, the shameless robbery of the workers through the open appropriation hy Capital of the profit values of Labour, would still leave our social system a veritable hell! If. we would regenerate society upon first principles, we must • assuredly apply our reforms all round. Why should the land capitalist be forced to disgorge his ill-gotten gains and to make restitution to the community, whilst the capitalist manufacturers, mill-owners, mine-proprietors and the rest are still permitted to exploit Labour with a perfect immunity, and to build up enormous fortunes out ot the profit values created by the toil of their miserable wageslaves? And yet you vigorously denounce the one and ignore the other ! ' But,' replies the single- ' land is a natural asset, and as such belongs to the community as a whole.' Which is very pretty and plausible, but analyse it, and what does it really amount to? Just this; that inasmuch as land is a necessary factor of production, no man should be allowed to exploit his fellows by seizing the means of production in land. On an exact parity of reasoning, inasmuch as capital—equally with land be it marked an indispensable factor in production, no man should be allowed to exploit his fellows by seizing the means of production in capital. The one statement is the logical corollary of the other; and what we Socialists want the single-taxers to show us is, how the freeing of the land will ultimately benefit the worker, unless and until Labour is itself freed?" Surely those indications of the trend of opinion should warn Messrs. E. Withy, Gerald Jfeacocke, Adam Kelly, and other single-taxers against the danger of inflaming the multitude to enforce the confiscation of land-values and the destruction of freehold tenure. The social fabric rests only on the acquiescence of the masses and, to adapt a remark by Mrs. Thos. Lake Harris, those three gentlemen " may not apply the spark to the mine that threatens to explode society, but they generate a fluid of vital dynamite that is diffused, that flows in currents throughout the bodily form and corporate atmosphere of society; a fluid that is inherently explosive, and that explodes in -universal conflagration, when full and ripe." They are inciting the masses to confiscation, thinking they will stop at land values, but I warn them as one acquainted with current social evolution— and human na.ture~<-tu»t the . nationalisation of

and, of capital; of houses, and of all means of production and transit, will follow the nationalisation of land values. My warning is friendly. They mean well, but we also are on board the ship, and must: not allow them to run her upon the rocks, even with the beat intentions.— am, etc., F. G. Ewixgton.