Individual Liberty - Evernote

land unfitting it for a basis, it has just the opposite effect. We should not be misled by
the idea that currency can be redeemed only in that on which it is based.
Free Money First
J. M. M'Gregor, a writer for the Detroit Labor Leaf thinks free land the chief
desideratum. And yet he acknowledges that the wage-worker can't go from any of our
manufacturing centers to the western lands, because "such a move would involve a
cash outlay of a thousand dollars, which he has not got, nor can he get it." It would
seem, then, that free land, though greatly to be desired, is not as sorely needed here
and now as free capital. And this same need of capital would be equally embarrassing
if the eastern lands were free, for still more capital would be required to stock and
work a farm than the wage-worker can command. Under our present money system he
could not even get capital by putting up his farm as collateral, unless he would agree
to pay a rate of interest that would eat him up in a few years. Therefore, free land is of
little value to labor without free capital, while free capital would be of inestimable
benefit to labor even if land should not be freed for some time to come. For with it
labor could go into other industries on the spot and achieve its independence. Not free
land, then, but free money is the chief desideratum. It is in the perception of this
prime importance of the money question that the greenbackers, despite their utterly
erroneous solution of it, show their marked superiority to the State Socialists and the
land nationalizationists.
The craze to get people upon the land is one of the insanities that has dominated social
reformers ever since social reform was first thought of. It is a great mistake. Of
agriculture it is is true as of every other industry that there should be as few people
engaged in it as possible; that is, just enough to supply the world with all the
agricultural products which it wants. The fewer farmers there are, after this point of
necessary supply is reached, the more useful people there are to engage In other
industries which have not yet reached this point, and to devise and work at new
industries hitherto unthought of. It is altogether likely that we have too many farmers
now. It is not best that any more of us should become farmers, even if every
homestead could be made an Arcadia. The plough is very well in its way, and Arcadia
was very well in its day. But the way of the plough is not as wide as the world, and the
world has outgrown the day of Arcadia. Human life henceforth is to be, not a simple,
but a complex thing. The wants and aspirations of mankind are daily multiplying.
They can be satisfied only by the diversification of industry, which is the method of
progress and the record of civilization. This is one of the great truths which Lysander
Spooner has so long been shouting into unwilling ears. But the further diversification
of industry in such a way as to benefit, no longer the few and the idle, but the many
and the industrious, depends upon the control of capital by labor. And this, as
Proudhon, Warren, Greene, and Spooner have shown, can be secured only by a free
money system.
In answer to my article, "Free Money First," in which was discussed the comparative
importance of the money and land questions, J. M. M'Gregor, of the Detroit Labor
Leaf, says: "I grant free money first. I firmly believe free money will come first, too,