From these premises it would seem unquestionable that each individual of the human family had an equal right to its benefits.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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The only difference that ought to exist should be that limited and bounded by the capacity of each to produce.
No person could therefore ever acquire, under the rule of universal justice, an absolute ownership to any part or portion of the earth’s surface.
Can a system organized by a people perform acts not in the power of the people themselves to perform?
Can a government by the mere fact of having been organized to preserve harmony among a people acquire an absolute title to the earth that is contained within its jurisdiction?
If an individual cannot go into an unclaimed territory and take absolute possession of a certain portion of it, then no number of persons, nor can any government they may establish, do so.
And here exists one cause of discord between labor which produces and capital which monopolizes.
Were there no inequalities between men in claims to certain areas of the earth’s surface, no other monopolies would find a basis for existence.
Every individual should have a right to the use of a certain quantity of the real estate of the country, and the right to all improvements he might make upon it.
Here would be a basis of equity which would forever prevent the accumulation in the hands of any few persons, of vast quantities of real estate, which is the real basis of all securities.
All manufacturers must rely upon it for their raw material, and, therefore, a practical equality in the occupation and use of the public domain would insure a certain degree of equality in all things that might spring from it.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.