The Abuse of Land and Capital

that they should be made by the laws of any people a "property" often owned by entirely idle and unprofitable persons, who may exact hire for them from those who are working for the maintenance of social existence, or may even refuse the would-be workers access to these indispensable instruments of industry? For what are the effects?

If the access be refused—land kept out of cultivation; tillage turned into sheepwalks, and sheepwalks into shootings; natural sources of wealth locked up from use; the pleasant places of the earth, the mountains, the moors, the woodlands, the sea shores, parked and preserved and placarded, that the few may have space for their pride, while the many must crowd into squalid cities and dismal agricultural towns, and take their holidays in herds 011 the few beaten tracks left free for them. In commerce—rings, corners, syndicates, pools, and monopolies, and all the fearful social loss and waste of under-production; lock-outs, short time, and other expedients of the reckless selfishness of capitalists who are nursing the market for private ends.

If access be granted—if the land and capital be devoted to their proper use, then it is on condition that rent and interest be paid to the proprietor, simply in virtue of his existence as such. He may or may not be doing some work of social utility, but the rent and interest are paid to him as an absolutely idle person, and it is this,