15. Bad Remedies
In short, either a rising or a falling price level wrongs great classes of society and brings discontent, suspicion, and violence. The public fails to discern the great cause lying back of all the trouble; but it detects, almost unerringly, "who's got the money" and, though less unerringly, at whose expense. It demands a remedy without first knowing the correct diagnosis.
Thus any price disturbance gives a hearing to all manner of reform movements, whether apropos or irrelevant and whether good, bad, or indifferent. For instance, Henry George's single-tax propaganda was aided both by falling and rising prices. During the falling prices there was the spectacle of the tenant oppressed by an increasing burden of rent and the independent farmer oppressed by an increasing burden of interest. These evils thrust the "land problem" forward, especially in Ireland and Kansas, and any proposal to solve the land problem got a ready hearing.
When, later, prices rose it was natural to attribute this rise to pressure of population for subsistence on the margin of cultivation, especially as by the time this theory was urged the belated rise of rents and of land values began. The high cost of living seemed explainable by high real estate values and raised land rents, and indignation against the system of private ownership of land was readily aroused, especially as numerous instances were at hand of great fortunes made from the unearned increment and of land frauds, land grabs, and exploitation by great corporations of natural resources.
Not all the reforms which thus get factitious help from price movements are genuine reforms.
