most persistent champions of the cost principle and the exchange of labor hour for hour.
(12) I presume I am entirely safe in saying that the word Anarchy is used in the sense of confusion a thousand times where it is used once in the sense of Liberty. Therefore Edgeworth's closing assertion that "there is no squint in our use of the word Anarchy," and that "there is a squint in employing it as a synonym with confusion," shows how much reliance can be placed upon his opening assertion that in this discussion he has "used common words in their usual sense."
PROPERTY UNDER ANARCHISM.
[Liberty, July 12, 1890.]
The current objection to Anarchism, that it would throw property titles and especially land titles into hopeless confusion, has originated an interesting discussion in The Free Life between Auberon Herbert, the editor, and Albert Tarn, an Anarchistic correspondent. Mr. Tarn is substantially right in the position that he takes; his weakness lies in confining himself to assertion,—a weakness of which Mr. Herbert promptly takes advantage.
Mr. Tarn's letter is as follows:
To the Editor of The Free Life:
Sir,—In your article on "The Great Question of Property " in last week's Free Life you speak of the weakness of the Anarchist position as involving either "hard crystalline customs very difficult to alter," or "some perpetually recurring form of scramble."
It seems strange that you can attribute to Anarchy just the very weaknesses that characterize our present property system. Why, it is now that we have "hard crystalline customs very difficult to alter," and a "perpetually recurring"—nay, a never-ceasing—"form of scramble."
Anarchists above all, though in favor of free competition, are averse to the eternal scramble which is now going on for the privileges which legal money and legal property confer, of living at ease at the expense of the masses.
Anarchy would sweep away such privileges, and, there being no longer any chance of obtaining them, people would simply work for their living and retain whatever they earn. There would be little or no quarrel about property, no revolutionary movements to try to get hold of it, no taxes, no State Socialism. Why, all your struggles to-day, not only in the workshop and counting-house, but in the political field, are caused by the stupid laws of property and money, which result in a never-ending scramble.
Anarchy means peace; it means every one getting what he's worth and