Charitable Aid.

Manawatu Herald, 24 February 1898, Page 2

Charitable Aid.

m (Contributed.) The result is that the land-owner is able to acquire the rightg of the inventor for a consideration, slight in comparison with the advantages it brings. He is then able to dischargo his former employees who have no means of producing bread even by their old method withoui-the land. The result is that the island produces bread, capable of supporting fifty men, for the benefit of two. The forty-eight must then starve or depend on the charity of the owner. So that we find the invention of machinery enriches the few at the expense of the msny, where the few have the monopoly of the land. But to ascribe this to the fault of man chinery in itself, is plainly unjust, for we have seen that machinery en* riches a people who own tha land in community. Therefore the fault is not in machinery, but in absolute ownership o! land. . We find also that increase of population further enriches the land owner at the expense of those who do not own laud, for land is indispensable to every in* dividual, and if monopolized, enables the monopolist to demand from the occupier the whole of his produce, barely allowing him the neoesuries of life* for an absolute owner may exclude everyone. If a British subject be cast aahore on an island and put to death by the inhabitants we say he has been murdered ; but if a man be cast ashore on an island owned by an Englishman, the owner by our laws may not fall npon him with axe and spear, but may shut his gates and compel the unfortunate wretch to wander between high and low tide mark, where, if he perish from exposure and starvation, he is said to have died from poverty. The one is a savage law, the other, a civi* lized. In no country do we find the population pressing on the means of subsistence go that it is foroed to exert itself to the utmost to produce the necessaries of life alone. Let us understand then what is meant by the expression overpopulation. It we take again our island example, we, have a man in possession of land and a machine oapable of producing bread for 50 men, but two are all that are necessary to work it, and the owner will not use his land and machine to produce bread for anyone, unless he can get something in return, and the only thing the forty* eight have that may be of any use to the owner, is labour. They are starving, and he hai the necessaries of life, so that he is in the better position to make a bargain, and may ~ command the whole of their labour by supplying them with the neoeisary quantity of bread to sustain life, and enough land to lie down upon. But if the owner is unable to find employment amusing or profitable to himself for the whole fortyeight he will tell those he cannot make use of that he has no work for them, and as he will not give them bread for nothing, they must starve. The country is then laid to b« overpopulated, which ia a misnomer, for while the producers oan more than Bupply the demand for their produce, how can the country be over-popu- - lated ? And while there is a single - individual in want of the necessaries of life, how oan a country be over* productive ?