OPEN LETTEE TO POPE LEO XTTT. 35
If you will come to the United States, you will find in a land wide enough and rich enough to support in com- fort the whole population of Europe, the growth of a sentiment that looks with evil eye on immigration, because the artificial scarcity that results from private property in land makes it seem as if there is not room enough and work enough for those already here.
Or go to the Antipodes, and in Australia, as in Eng- land, you may see that private property in land is oper- ating to leave the land barren and to crowd the bulk of the population into great cities. Go wherever you please where the forces loosed by modern invention are begin- ning to be felt and you may see that private property in land is the curse, denounced by the prophet, that prompts men to lay field to field till they "alone dwell in the midst of the earth."
To the mere materialist this is sin and shame. Shall we to whom this world is God's world we who hold that man is called to this life only as a prelude to a higher life shall we defend it?
4. That Industry expended on land gives ownership in the land itself. (9-10.)
Your Holiness next contends that industry expended on land gives a right to ownership of the land, and that the improvement of land creates benefits indistinguishable and inseparable from the land itself.
This contention, if valid, could only justify the owner- ship of land by those who expend industry on it. It would not justify private property in land as it exists.
present century, and which is now abandoned to a loneliness and solitude more depressing than that of the prairie or the wilderness. Thus has this land system actually exercised the power of life and death on a vast scale, for which there is no parallel even in the dark records of slavery. Bishop Nulty's Letter to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of Heath.
�� �
