ts
it, and you have this condition of things: that those who do not
happen to be among the private owners must compete for the privilege
of living on the earth, they must pay a part of the results of their
labor for permission to work, and on the other hand the fortunate
owners receive something for which they themselves render no labor. It
is strange that the Pope did not see the absurdities of his own
propositions. He says:--

"Moreover the earth, though divided among private owners, ceases not
thereby to minister to the needs of all; for there is no one who does
not live on what the land brings forth. Those who do not possess the
soil contribute their labor; so that it may be truly said that all
human subsistence is derived either from labor on one's own land, or
from some laborious industry which is paid for either in the produce
of the land itself or in that which is exchanged for what the land
brings forth."

Pope Leo is mistaken. All human subsistence is not derived either from
labor on one's own land or from some laborious industry. Some human
subsistence, as the Pope says, is derived from labor on one's own
land. Some human subsistence is derived from laborious industry on the
land of others. And--what the Pope seems to ignore--some human
subsistence is derived by owning land and letting others work upon it,
taking from them part of the fruits of their labor in exchange for the
mere permission to labor. By no construction can such ownership be
classed as a "laborious industry." Yet such owners generally enjoy the
very best of "human subsistence."

Nevertheless, a few sentences further on, the Pope naively asks: "Is
it just that the fruit of a man's sweat and labor should be enjoyed by
another?" Had the Pope pondered over that question more profoundly, he
might have come to far different conclusions from those which he seems
to have reached.

It is unfortunate that the Pope through a desire to uphold the just
rights of property should have been led to maintain the privileges of
monopoly, and still more unfortunate that so many Catholics will
consider his blunder an article of faith and feel it binding upon
their consciences to oppose all further efforts to impair private
ownership of land by taxation--the only way in which individual
possession can be reconciled with the common right of all mankind to
the earth.

In one place the Pope seems to doubt the extent to which the principle
of private ownership