Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2115

Penciling in the margins, Margaret E. Bateman, Who Owns the Earth? New York, The Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1938. 

 

 

 

4/ “..the problem of why millions of people .. are so shut out from the resources of the earth that they cannot feed or clothe themselves ..”

 

.. are so shut out from serving one another that they cannot employ the resources of the earth .. to feed or clothe themselves ..

 

 

5/  “We also believe that the monopoly of the natural resources of this earth, and the unnatural trade barriers, are fundamentally responsible for the present world economic situation.”

 

.. that the scarcities and monopolies caused by taxation and other unnatural trade barriers ..

 

 

5/ “As a writer in one of the Henry George publications recently put it, ‘We know that private ownership of a single acre of land gives to the title-holder the power to say who may come on this acre, how long he may stay there, what he may do while there, as well as how much of his production he must part with for the permission to be there and work.’”

 

 

He is only one of the contracting parties.

 

 

5/  “..the late Sir George Fowlds of New Zealand … said: ‘It is estimated that when Persia perished, 1 per cent of the people owned all the land; Egypt went down when 2 per cent owned 97 per cent of all the wealth; Babylon died when 2 per cent owned all the wealth and Rome expired when 1,800 men possessed all the then known world.’ What do we find in the Twentieth Century A.D.?”

 

Land owners were always either politicians or their victims. In the twentieth century they are only victims.

 

 

5/ “Mr. Peace further states: ‘Small wonder that between May, 1851 and December, 1920, no less than 4,338,199 natives — the real owners of Irish soil — emigrated for permanent residence abroad. The great majority went to America — and increased the rental value of that country for the landlords there.’”

 

 

They went where they were less taxed and hence could exchange and thus create wealth and values of every kind — not rent alone.