tion has first of all received a check somewhere. Depression in trade, or reduced demand, is impossible till production has been somewhere first of all reduced.

To find the ultimate cause of that widespread cessation in demand which we speak of as stagnation in trade, we must trace it back to some point where the first step is taken in checking production. At some point in the complicated system of production and exchange the first hindrance to production must occur which creates the first failure in demand and communicates itself ultimately throughout the entire world of industry and com

merce.

The primary industries are those which operate directly with land, which extract wealth directly from nature,-agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining. These occupations produce the demand for all others. The tailors and shoemakers follow the miner. The storekeepers follow the farmer. Miners and farmers do not go to a new place because carpenters and blacksmiths are there, but carpenters and blacksmiths go because miners and farmers are there. The pyramid of human industry rests absolutely on the land. All industry is practically the application of labor and capital to land, or to materials obtained from land. All industries of every kind whatever require the use of land. The first check, therefore, in the long chain of causes which produce depression and stagnation in trade must be found in some hindrance which discourages or prevents the free application of labor and capital to land. That hindrance is the speculative advance in land values which always precedes and mainly causes successive periods of business depression. That there are other minor subsidiary causes is not to be denied, but they are altogether inadequate of themselves to produce bad trade universally in any country.

Overproduction is sometimes regarded as the chief cause of trade depression. Stores and warehouses are filled with goods which cannot be sold; and many

mills and thousands of work-people are put on half-time or are altogether idle. This is so, it is said, because production has exceeded the demand for consumption. Yet there has been no single hour when the people have had as much of this piled-up wealth as they desired and could have consumed. They still want more than they can obtain. During the period of supposed overproduction thousands of idle men have vainly offered their labor for the purpose of obtaining some of this wealth. When the period of activity in trade has gone by their number is increased. While the stores are full of goods which cannot be sold, the streets are full of involuntary idlers who want the goods but cannot buy. Overproduction will not bear examination in the face of the fact that the people have at no time received half as much as they could consume.

Then we say, "Money is scarce"; "people have no money." "people have no money." But why have they no money? Simply because they are not able to produce those commodities which they exchange for money in order that they may exchange this money for other commodities which they desire. Produce of one kind is unsalable because produce of another kind is scarce. The people who would be buyers have no money, because the production has been checked by which their money is obtained. A check in production and a check in consumption stand in the relation of cause and effect. But it is not a check in consumption that first causes a check in production; it is a check in production that first causes a check in consumption

always. A falling off in demand is a result of diminished production. Overproduction, overconsumption and some other reasons commonly assigned as causes of bad trade no doubt contain some element of truth and have some force; but they do not explain the situation, and as explanations of the phenomena of recurrent periods of activity and depression of trade they are entirely inadequate. After a period of prosperity

the desire to consume remains unabated; the willingness to consume remains unabated; and the ability and will to produce remain unchanged. Why, then, should a period of inactivity succeed good times?

The main initial cause is doubtless that check to production which is brought about by the increase in land values which invariably and inevitably results from a period of prosperity. It is the operation of a natural law. It is not produced by land owners nor by capitalists nor by government; and all the governments on earth cannot prevent it. This increase in ground-rents is the result of a natural law which determines the growing wealth of a nation to rent; in other words, rent like a huge sponge absorbs advancing wealth. Material progress does not tend to increase interest nor wages, but it vastly increases land values. The wealth of a nation registers itself in rent. Increasing rent is the increasing charge which capital and labor must pay for the use of the earth. During a period of prosperity this increase in rent proceeds till a point is reached at which production is checked. This stoppage in production is the first step in the succeeding period of stagnation. Concurrently with this increasing charge which capital and labor must pay for their opportunities, another and probably the most important result is brought about. A large volume of capital is tempted into land investment by the increasing land values. This capital being withdrawn or withheld from productive enterprises, the check on production is greatly intensified. In this manner is produced the first diminution in production which creates the first diminution in demand, and results in dull trade, involuntary idleness and increased want and poverty throughout the civilized world.

During every period of trade activity the rent of land increases beyond its normal value, and reaches a speculative value which rules universally. It is only when this speculative value is reduced,

actually or proportionately to the total wealth production, that capital will again be turned into productive channels, and the period of depression will pass away.

The speculative advance in land values alone explains the period of bad trade which regularly succeeds a period of good trade throughout the industrial world. As already stated, this advance in rents is not brought about by the will of landowners, who are no more responsible for it than other people. It is none the less of the nature of a lockout against capital and labor, and in these days of rapid material progress it produces results more disastrous than were possible in quieter and less progressive times. If our perceptions were not dulled by familiarity, how astonishing and unnatural it would seem that many thousands of willing workers, able and anxious to produce wealth, should remain in enforced idleness. These men desire wealth. The earth is full of it. The price to be paid for it is labor. These men are offering the price, but there is no opportunity for them to satisfy their wants. They are excluded from the source of all opportunity, the earth itself. When many thousands of men of all trades and occupations are seeking work and cannot find any, it is certain that the ultimate cause can only be that labor is shut off from land somewhere. It may be on either side of the earth; it may be in Europe or in the United States, or both. Somewhere the first check has been given to production by speculative advance in land values, and the effect, a check in demand, has propagated similar checks in a thousand occupations till the final result is felt in widespread depression, commercial failures and involuntary idle

ness.

It is said that one million work-people are constantly out of employment in this nation, even in moderately good times. These involuntary idlers produce no wealth. Their enforced idleness entails a greater loss on the nation than the cost of a large standing army. It is not neces

sary to suppose that were every obstacle removed which prevents free access to land these idlers would all become miners or herdsmen or farmers; but it can hardly be doubted that a sufficient number of them would do so to give employment to the rest, and to create a demand for more. And their employment would not fail to bring advantage and profit to every merchant, manufacturer and tradesman in the nation.

Apart from any theory or theories, it is clear and undeniable that throughout

the industrial world speculative advance in ground rent or land values, which includes and controls franchises, invariably precedes a season of commercial depression. That advance in land values is the main cause which brings about depression in trade is scarcely less clear. And it is the only explanation which accounts adequately for these alternate periods in the world of industry and

commerce.

Boston, Mass.

SAMUEL BRAZIER.

TH

HE DEVOLUTION of legislative and judicial functions upon boards and commissions, and even upon private or semi-private corporations, contrary to the tripartite scheme of rational government, is a tendency of the times which may be held to imperil the liberties of the people.

It seems desirable and relevant to recall briefly that men, in the development of democratic society, conceived of a legislative department, a judicial and an executive, each to be supreme in its own sphere. It was never contemplated that the powers of legislation should be exercised by the judiciary, for obviously the courts would not be directly amenable to the authoritative people; neither was it designed that the judicial function should be transferred to the private citizen, not even excepting a "commission"; for the lay class, even if accomplished and upright, would still be without the complete mechanism and power of juridicial tribunals to compel the fullest testimony, and thus secure exact justice.

Nevertheless, it would appear that legislators and citizens in general do not always apprehend these primary political

distinctions. Laws have been passed' commissions appointed and license-boards created which override, with many potentialities of injustice, what may be called the constitutional principle of specialization.

When the high tribunal of Massachusetts declared recently that the Metropolitan Park Commission, acting under a new law, could not proscribe certain inartistic advertising signs, the ground of the opinion was that this interference constituted a violation of the rights of property. The soundness of this view is not questioned; but if, discursively, a maxim be enunciated-and it arises most logically-that legislative and judicial functions cannot be transferred or dele

gated, and on this alone the act in question be disallowed, will not a blow be struck at the fundamental error of the legislators, and perhaps something be done, by suggestion, to prevent a recurrence of this dangerous class of lawmaking blunders ?

It must not be assumed, in this connection, that a state legislature itself could constitutionally pass such a proscriptive measure. Apparently it could

not. The proceeding is repugnant to the idea of liberty; and it requires but little examination to prove that the alleged offence to the esthetic would be of slight consequence compared to the evils, hardships and injustice that, if the principle were widely applied, would result to the people as a whole.

Perhaps a still more striking illustration of the irregular devolution of legislative authority is noted in the proscription, by many towns, of a circus. It may not be permitted in certain places because it "takes away money"; or brings a horde of roughs, necessitating extra expense for police; or causes the poorer and less morally robust citizen to neglect the payment of his grocers' bills. Hence, the license-board, selectmen or aldermen, as the case may be, refuse to grant a permit. They have come to believe that the extraordinary power of prohibition belongs to them by virtue of charter from the legislature, oblivious to the fact that the law-making body itself is impotent to prohibit a legitimate business, and certainly could not transmit extra-physical functions to its creature. They overlook the fact that the essence of the license principle is, after all, regulation, not prevention. They propose, in effect, in the specific case of the circus, to punish a body not for evils inherent, but belonging to the imperfect community in which it temporarily abides. They do not heed the caution that in dealing with an evil we must not destroy liberty, but merely the parasites of liberty.

Rather should the people know and understand, not necessarily the evanescent circus, but the living principle comprehended in its existence as a legitimate institution. They must see that it has the rights of trade; and that it is infinitely better for the developing human nature of a community to have large freedom of choice than be bound and find an apparent compensation inneighborhood serenity!

But any indirect weakening of character is secondary to the direct injustice and harm likely to be inflicted upon business enterprise, if powers of proscription and interference are devolved from their proper spheres upon politically isolated and irresponsible persons, however wellmeaning they may be.

An important correlated matter is the bestowing of judicial functions, notably in the large cities of the state of New York, upon a semi-private corporation, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. With full sympathy for the objects of the organization, may it yet not be said that the act empowering the society to take an unlicensed dog, and in default of the license fee, and an added money penalty, confiscate and perhaps destroy the animal, is not only ultra vires, but specifically unconstitutional? "Nor shall any person be . . . deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," says the fifth amendment of the American Constitution; "Judicial powers cannot be delegated," says the potential maxim. Yet in the Empire State, and elsewhere, this is done, and the lawmakers have said that it is all right!

With a scarcely wider application of the new doctrine of every corporation its own judiciary, there well may be the spectacle of a department store arresting a shoplifter and putting her forthwith into a cage, or inflicting other monitory degradation. (The equitable possibilities of inequity are almost appalling!) The machinery of the courts, designed to secure protection to the accused, completest information and judicial guidance in the meting out of justice, would largely rust away, and a diversified tyranny of autocracy, some of the forerunners of which have been noted, would press heavily upon the peo