The Relation of Land Monopoly to 
Population Health. The Relation of Land Monopoly to 
Population Health. 
By GEORGE HOMAN, M. D., 
Secretary State Board of Health of Missq,u»f; Professor of Hygiene and 
Forensic Medicine, St. Lotri's Medical College. 
Presented at the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the 
American Public Health Association, Charleston, 
S. C., December 16-19, 1890. 
^Reprinted from Vol. XVI of the Transactions of the American Public Health 
Association.] 
^anmb, B* B* ♦ 
Republican Press Association, Railroad Square. 
1891. THE RELATION OF LAND MONOPOLY TO POPULATION 
HEALTH. 
A declared purpose of this Association is the advancement of sanitary 
science and the promotion of measures for the practical application of 
public hygiene ; and, as all sanitarians know, among the gravest problems 
presenting themselves are those relating to tenement-house populations 
and municipal slums, or the massing of large numbers of human beings 
within restricted areas or localities. It is known that such districts 
demand the constant attention of sanitary authorities, as it is in these 
quarters that all the most dangerous communicable diseases have their 
chosen seat, and that they are the sources and centres from which our 
domestic epidemics arise and spread. 
It has been a large part of the life-work of many of the members now 
present to grapple with the evils thus presenting, and while no doubt in 
many instances a fair measure of success has been achieved in the control 
of population plagues, still such dangers tend to recur again and again, 
and it seems at last that the remedies applied are but palliative and do 
not reach the actual seat of the disorder. 
The menace and danger to the general public attending the origin, 
growth, and persistence of municipal slums are generally recognized as 
affecting the social order on many sides, health, safety, and morals all 
alike being gravely concerned therein. 
This being the case, and in view of the limited actual achievement 
apparent in the work of eradicating those diseases that are most danger- 
ous amidst our population, it behooves sanitarians to bethink themselves 
whether they have gone to the root of the matter and determined fully 
and truly why it is, with all the advances made in wealth, in invention, 
and apparent civilization, that so much destitution, physical and moral 
and mental degradation and suffering, such a burden of wasting and 
spreading diseases, are seen to-day on every hand. 
In recognition of and obedience to this obligation to seek further the 
true causes of this social phenomenon, it becomes necessary to consider 
What are the vital requisites of man ? What are the natural elements or 
conditions indispensably necessary to the well-being of the body, and its 4 
LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATION HEALTH. 
keeping in a healthful state? The reply to these questions would be, 
Earth, air, water, food. 
The conception of physical existence without land is beyond the pow- 
ers of the human mind. We can conceive and know of existence with- 
out air, or at least the smallest amount that will baffle death ; we know 
of life being sustained for varying periods without water or food ; but the 
finite mind cannot grasp the idea of life without land. From the earth 
we come, to the earth we return : fashioned from its elements, sustained 
by its products, we are resolved again into the bosom of the great com- 
mon mother. The oceans and the waters rest upon it, the atmosphere 
is supported by it: the earth is the source, the strength, and the end of 
every form of physical life. 
If land, then, be the first vital requisite, what must be the consequences 
to human health and life if monopoly of it be permitted? To illustrate, 
let the results that would flow from a monopoly of other vital necessities 
be considered. 
Let it be supposed that at some former time, through force, or craft, or 
grant, or other means which would give legal right to-day, some indi- 
vidual had acquired a title in fee to the atmosphere of this state, with the 
right to collect rent from other individuals for its use in breathing: 
obviously the air lord would have not only the health but the lives of 
such persons in his power, and he could exact such a price for this vital 
necessity as best suited his pleasure or interest; obviously, also, it 
would be to his interest to let every person willing to serve him have 
that amount of air necessary to supply the needs of the body and keep 
it in the most productive condition while engaged in such service. 
As his wealth thus grew, and likewise his avarice, it might be found, 
through competition for this necessity, that, whereas three hundred and 
fifty cubic feet of pure air per day were ordinarily required to enable one 
man to produce a certain amount of wealth, by the device of riveting an 
iron band closely around his neck the physiological demand for air in 
his descendants could be reduced one half, or that the quality supplied 
need be only half as pure while still yielding the same return in laboi' to 
the air lord, and thus making it doubly profitable : or, it might be, instead 
of working directly for him, that they chose to employ themselves, pay- 
ing to him a specified rental for the air they used. And if, perchance, 
there came into his domain those able to pay but half the rent demanded, 
he would have the undoubted right to attach garrotes to their wind-pipes, 
and thus fence out the air so that they should take no more of his prop- 
erty than they were able to pay for. Should any person, however, 
venture into the air lord's dominion who refused to serve him, or pay rent 
for the air consumed, he could call his servants and legally eject the 
intruder beyond atmospheric bounds, or confine him in a receiver from 
which the air was withdrawn, or nearly so, until the prisoner or his 
friends satisfied the demand for property wrongfully appropriated, and 
for the trespass and outrage committed. He might not have the imme- 
diate power of life or death, but the amount of air given the prisoner LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATLON HEALTH. 
5 
might be barely enough to keep him alive, or in quality so foul as to 
invite death, but to all intents and purposes such power would lie in his 
hands subject in its exercise only to his caprice or pleasure. 
Let it be supposed, again, that, by means similar to those by which 
the lord just instanced gained his right to lay an air tax, another person 
was vested with the ownership of all the water in the state, and of all 
the rain-clouds that float above it, and that neither famishing man, nor 
suffering woman, nor fever-smitten child dare take a cupful from brook, 
river, or rain-fall without paying the proprietor for the privilege ; and 
should his lawful demand for payment be denied, he would undoubtedly 
have the right to summon sheriff or constable and drive the delinquent 
from his domain, or confine him in a desert where only the scantiest 
supply of this life necessity could be had : in this case, again, the lord 
proprietor might not possess the direct legal power of life or death over 
the trespasser, but in effect he would, for the dole of water might be so 
small that the prisoner would shortly perish outright of thirst. 
Let it be supposed once more, that there was still another lord who 
came into his rights in the same way as the other two, and whose title 
deed embraced all the sunlight falling upon the state: his right of 
tribute would extend not only to those who took the sunshine out-of-doors 
or within as being necessary to health, but also to those who conducted 
their business by its aid, or whose crops were favored and ripened by its 
influence. In default of the rent, his right undeniably would be to call 
the military or police power to his aid, and commit to caverns or dun- 
geons all delinquents who took the sunshine in the open, and darken with 
impenetrable blinds the doors and windows of the houses of those who 
enjoyed its cheering benefits in that way. 
Other suppositions might be indulged in with reference to the fore- 
stalling of other vital necessities or comforts, as food, clothing, fire, shel- 
ter ; but it would be beside the present purpose, which is to ask sanita- 
rians to consider what would be the effect on population health and 
life if those bounties of nature cited in detail were subject to the con- 
jectured monopolies. Suppose, further, that while each lord found his 
exclusive privilege immensely profitable, it nevertheless occurred to 
them that by combining, and forming a joint monopoly of air, water, 
and sunlight, their revenues could be enormously increased : could and 
would they not do it under perfect shelter of their legal rights ? Have 
the metes and bounds of human avarice and money greed ever been set? 
Would consideration of such facts that ten thousands of their fellow-men 
were gasping for air, or as many more perishing for water, or a mul- 
titude pining for the sunlight, move them in the least? Probably not, 
for human history shows many instances, from before the time of the 
Mamertine prison to the Black Hole of Calcutta, and later, where all this 
has been done, and many of those who did it died quietly, if not com- 
fortably, in their beds. 
So long as the law of gravitation binds the bodies of men to the earth, 
what need is there for title deeds to air, water, or sunshine? Does not 6 
LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATLON HEALTH. 
ownership of the land embrace all else, and make possible all other vital 
monopolies ? 
Common justice and humanity would both cry out, however, against 
engrossment of the more palpable necessaries of life, but have stood by 
consenting, perhaps, while such forestalling has merged itself in the 
greater monopoly. 
The grosser form of slavery has vanished, but the substance remains 
under a semblance less plain and revolting. It is not charged that all 
landlords are oppressive in the exercise of their vested rights and powers, 
any more than it is not doubted that in the days of black slavery there 
were many owners who were humane, and careful of the moral and 
physical well-being of their slaves; but, for all this, a main indictment 
framed against that system was, that in its easy possibilities it put the 
power of human weal or woe, of life or death, in the hands of the mas- 
ter ; and that such power should be so lodged was opposed to the better 
moral sense of mankind. And the same indictment stands now, in the 
time of industrial slavery, against the masters of the land ; for the " dif- 
ference between the ownership of a man and the ownership of that 
element on and from which he must live, if he is to live at all, is one of 
degree and not of kind." The reputed ball and chain, whip-lash, and 
blood-hound of black slavery are replaced by the poverty, necessity, and 
want of industrial slavery; and who can deny that their power is far 
wider and deeper than was that of the gross insignia of the former phase 
of bondage ? 
That the source and strength of the latter enslavement lie in land 
monopoly is evident from the power of the landlord to exact a price for 
the use of land that the hand of man has never touched to improve, the 
right to claim and appropriate as his own that value which the presence 
and labors of the community as a whole have given to the bare land, 
and to deny its use to his fellows until all his exactions and conditions 
have been agreed to. 
What are the sanitary consequences of the exercise of this power as 
seen to-day in all industrial centres? What else but this can explain the 
massing of nearly three hundred thousand people in one square mile in 
the city of New York, when there is plenty of unused land within its 
limits? The conditions seen to-day are very like those induced in the 
walled cities of former times built for defence against armed enemies: 
the walls reared by land monopoly and speculation in this necessity of 
life prevent that dispersal of population so necessary to public health, and 
the prevention and restriction of domestic epidemics. 
The return to labor expended in lines of unskilled or little skilled em- 
ployment is so meagre as to be virtually the wage of a slave,-he gets 
just enough land, just enough air, just enough sunlight, just enough 
food, to enable him to toil; but even this consideration may be defaulted 
when the multitude of unemployed, bidding against each other for work, 
and the bitter struggle for existence, are remembered. This multitude 
is not only wasted by diseases dangerous to all, but they devour each LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATION HEALTH. 
7 
other; and the question remains how soon the taste of blood will lead 
them to devour society as at present constituted. 
Out of the wages paid on the principle take-that-or-starve, there is 
little to spare for roof and shelter, and where a number of dependents 
add to his anxieties, the laborer is forced to seek his housing in narrow- 
est quarters, and with little reference to what the health of his family 
may demand ; and thus situated, with thousands more like him, in over- 
crowded tenements, or in wretched hovels, with the uncertainty of em- 
ployment and the certainty of eviction if the rent is not paid confronting 
him, the deplorable and desperate realities of municipal slums are 
created, faced, and endured. 
Some years ago, while in the sanitary service of the city of St. Louis, 
I gathered data in congested centres, where the inmates of houses were 
heaped floor above floor, a family of six perhaps in one small room, 
from which calculations went to show that, situated as they were, all the 
living room on the face of the earth each person could claim was smaller 
in compass than a pauper's grave, six feet by two,-scarcely more, in 
fact, than a soldier occupies standing in the ranks ; so that in literal truth 
they had not where to lay themselves, on land they could call their own 
for the time,-but if the rent was not paid the landlord could summon the 
power of city and state and force them to leave ; and where could they 
go? The world is wide, to be sure, but it happens, so far as the average 
man is concerned, that all the more accessible or desirable parts are 
under fence, with penalties for trespass affixed. 
The avenues of escape from such conditions are not numerous ;-the 
hospital, the prison, the poorhouse, the grave, are the common alter- 
natives that offer, in all of which a freer space is allotted each occupant 
than falls to the members of many a family engaged in a hopeless strug- 
gle to avoid those alternatives. 
It is needless to say here that the atmosphere of such abodes teems 
with dangers to the moral and physical natures, or that such localities 
are nurseries of crime and hotbeds of disease that tax the utmost vigi- 
lance and activity of police and health officers to cope with and repress. 
The waste in human health and life is enormous, the destruction fall- 
ing with greatest severity on the young, the mortality rate reaching an 
unknown proportion, and the death-rate among young children amount- 
ing often to fully fifty per cent, or more of the total mortality. Diph- 
theria, scarlet-fever, and tuberculosis in all its forms, are active, being 
favored among the people by destitution in land, privation of air, insuffi- 
cient or bad food, want of sunlight, etc. ; while imported infections find, 
amid the squalor, hunger, and misery of such masses of people, the soil 
and substance needed for their epidemic spread. 
Effectual isolation and disinfection amid such conditions are almost 
impossible ; and in this circumstance lies the sanitary danger to those 
who are more comfortably situated. So close is the contact or inter- 
course, direct or indirect, between all classes, and so insidious the path- 
ways of disease, that their households may be invaded despite their 8 
LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATLON HEALTH. 
utmost care : so true it is that the hurt and wrong in any sense of the 
humblest member of society should be the swift concern and care of the 
greatest. 
No lasting relief to a disorder which so deeply affects civilized man- 
kind everywhere can be expected until a change is made in the laws 
relating to land, which shall prevent the forestalling of the first great 
bounty of nature and its conversion to the uses or profit of the few-a 
monopoly based on no true right of property, inasmuch as no man by 
his labor can produce land, which was freely given for the uses of all 
generations of men along with the other bounties of nature necessary to 
life. 
The plethoric and ever increasing wealth of the few, and the growing 
poverty of the many, are largely based on the power of the former to 
acquire and hold the land, and dictate the terms on which it may be 
used ; and the logical, natural, inevitable outcome of such a system and the 
exercise of such power is seen in every city where thousands are suffering 
and perishing from land famine, unable to use that amount of earth nec- 
essary to prevent their wasting and destruction by all the morbid agencies 
recognized by sanitarians as impending wherever human beings are 
forced into unwholesome contact and habitations. 
No honest denial by any one in a position to know can be made of 
the facts of there being widely spread preventable diseases, poverty, 
misery, suffering, and discontent among our populations, and many 
attempted explanations of these unwelcome facts have been offered ; but 
do they explain ? 
In the course of a considerable official experience in mingling with 
tenement-house populations, I never heard a single person say that it was 
his or her choice to live so ; all craved better conditions, but it was pov- 
erty, necessity, want, that compelled them to dwell amid such surround- 
ings, and all their energies were directed to getting means to pay the 
rent, and something to eat and wear for their families. 
The explanations offered of these social phenomena not sufficing, it 
seems to me that it is the duty of public health men to study the land 
question, and determine its relation, if any, to population health,- 
whether ■fag: throwing open to willing labor the natural opportunities to 
produce wealth existing on every hand, from which it is now barred by 
land monopoly entrenched behind human laws, and which would enable 
labor to employ itself if no bargain with an employer could be struck, 
would not effect a momentous change for the better in the sanitary con- 
ditions existing among city populations. 
The rights of the few may be the wrongs of the many,-social, sani- 
tary, material, vital. An unfailing test of a rising civilization is the 
placing of human rights above mere property rights. The struggle for 
human freedom has been waged at all times against those the source and 
strength of whose power lay in land monopoly, in their ability to control 
the surface of the earth on which their fellows moved and breathed. 
The story of freedom, too, is a story of resistance to aggression or flee- LAND MONOPOLY AND POPULATION HEALTH. 
9 
ing from oppression,-the aggression or oppression of lords spiritual, of 
war lords, and land lords. 
The land is in bonds, and so long as this continues complete human 
freedom is impossible, for justice, liberty, and humanity alike proclaim 
the equal right of every man to the use of that element which is the com- 
mon inheritance of all. This is the struggle which now impends. The 
question how the deliverance may be best accomplished is engaging the 
thought of many minds, and not last among these should be those who 
have the keeping of public health in their charge ; for I am fully per- 
suaded that in a correct understanding of the relation of land monopoly 
to population health will be found the true solution of many grave prob- 
lems that now perplex and baffle sanitarians. 
To borrow somewhat from Bulwer in conclusion : On many a noise- 
less field, with thoughts for armies, the struggle for human liberty is 
being waged ; and whenever, with fairer fates, freedom opposes might, 
and justice, redeeming the earlier defeat, smites down the forces that 
would consecrate the wrong,-look down, Spirit of Freedom ! look 
down and smile on the Free Man's land 1