258 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
all their material wants. How is it, then, that poverty continues 
in our midst and reaches the very producers of all this wealth ? 
Has the progress of civilization for its inevitable result the 
creation of pauperism ? 
Mr. George tries to show that economists are mistaken in 
attributing this excessive inequality to what they call the law of 
wages and the law of population. They maintain that if wages 
are insufficient, it is, firstly, because there is not enough capital 
destined for the support of labour ; and next, because the too 
rapid increase of population reduces the share of each labourer 
to the bare necessaries of life or even lower. Mr. George dis 
putes both these propositions. The labourer, he maintains, 
lives on the product of his labour and not upon capital ; if, then, 
a portion of his product was not taken away from him, he 
would be better off in proportion as labour became more 
productive ; and as to the law of Malthus, it is inapplicable to 
man, for of all living beings he alone can augment without 
limit the production of all that is necessary for his subsistence. 
Extreme inequality proceeds, according to Mr. George, solely 
from rent, which swallows up all the advantages of economic 
progress. There are three factors of production : land, labour, 
and capital. Each is remunerated by a part of the produce which 
is called, in the case of land, rent J in the case of labour, wages ; 
and in the case of capital, interest. The produce is, therefore, 
equivalent to rent, plus wages, plus interest. If rent increases, 
wages and interest will be less ; for the produce minus rent is 
equivalent to wages plus interest. In proportion as population 
and wealth increase, the price of food rises, and consequently 
the rent of land which produces the food also rises. Improve 
ments in the arts which diminish the cost of production also 
contribute to increase the profits of the farmer, and, soon after 
wards, the income of the landowner. The rise in rent may be 
checked by improved methods of agriculture, which create more 
produce, or by the cheapness of means of transport, which 
enable food to be brought from a sparsely peopled country to & 
densely peopled one ; but these checks to the rise of rent are 
only temporary. The general increase of population causes 
them little by little to disappear. The clear gain from all