(Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price?) The problem of whether the social revolution shall be violent or peaceable depends in great part upon our answer to the question of confiscation versus compensation. We are now going to consider, first, the abstract rights and wrongs of the question, and, second, the practical aspects of it.
There is a story very popular among single taxers and other advocates of freedom of the land. An English land-owner met a stranger walking on his estate, and rebuked him for trespassing. Said the stranger, "You own this land?" Said the other, "I do." "And how did you get it?" "I inherited it from my father." "And how did your father get it?" "He inherited it from his father." So on for half a dozen more ancestors, until at last the Englishman answered, "He fought for it." Whereupon the stranger took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and said, "I'll fight you for it."
This is all there is to say on the subject of the abstract rights of land titles. There is no title to land which is valid on a historical basis. Everything rests upon fraud and force, continued through endless ages of human history. We in the United States took most of our land from the Indians, and in the process our guiding rule was that the only good Injun was a dead Injun. We first helped the English kings to take large sections of our country from the French and Spanish, and then we took them from the English king by a violent revolution. We purchased our Southwestern states from Mexico, but not until we had taken the precaution of killing some thousands of Mexicans in war, which had the effect of keeping down the purchase price. It would be a simple matter to show that all public franchises are similarly tainted with fraud. Proudhon laid down the principle that "property is theft," and from this principle it is an obvious conclusion that society has the right to scrap all paper titles to wealth, and to start the world's industries over again on the basis of share and share alike.
But stop and consider for a moment. "Property is theft," you say. But go to your corner grocery, and tell the grocer that you deny his title to the sack of prunes which he exhibits in front of his counter. He will tell you that he has paid for them; but you answer that the prunes were raised on stolen land, and shipped to him over a railroad whose franchise was obtained by bribery. Will that convince the grocer? It will not. Neither will it convince the policeman or the judge, nor will it convince the voters of the country. Most people have a deeply rooted conviction that there are rights to property now definitely established and made valid by law. If you have paid taxes on land for a certain period, the land "belongs" to you; and I am sure you might agitate from now to kingdom come without persuading the American people that New Mexico ought to be returned to Mexico, or the western prairies to the Indian tribes.
Such are the facts; now let us apply them to the right of exploitation, embodied in the ownership of a certain number of bonds or shares of stock in the United States Steel Corporation. "Pass a law," says the Socialist, "providing for the taking over of United States Steel by the government." At once to every owner comes one single thought—are you going to buy this stock, or are you going to confiscate it? If you attempt confiscation, the courts will declare the law unconstitutional; and you either have to defy the courts, which is revolutionary action, or to amend the constitution. If you adopt the latter course, you have before you a long period of agitation; you have to carry both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority, and the legislatures of three-fourths of the States. You have to do this in the face of the most bitter and infuriated opposition of those who are defending what they regard as their rights. You have to meet the arguments of the entire capitalist press of the country, and you have the certaint............