Sources & Extracts

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The classic source for the claim that mixing one's labor with an unowned object gives one a property right in that object is found in John Locke's second treatise of government, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government, published in 1689. The qualification requiring that "there is enough, and as good left in common for others" is sometimes referred to as the Lockean Proviso.
Whether we consider natural Reason, which tells us, that Men, being once born, have a right to their Preservation, and consequently to Meat and Drink, and such other things, as Nature affords for their Subsistence: or Revelation, which gives us an account of those Grants God made of the World to Adam, and to Noah, and his Sons, 'tis very clear, that God, as King David says, Psal. CXV. xvi. has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common. But this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a Property in any thing....But I shall endeavour to show, how Men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express Compact of all the Commoners....

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable Property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others....

Thus this Law of reason makes the Deer, that Indian's who hath killed it; 'tis allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before, it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the Civiliz'd part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive Laws to determine Property, this original Law of Nature for the beginning of Property, in what was before common, still takes place; and by virtue thereof, what Fish any one catches in the Ocean, that great and still remaining Common of Mankind; of what Ambergriese any one takes up here, is by the Labour that removes it out of that common state Nature left it in, made his Property who takes that pains about it....

But the chief matter of Property being now not the Fruits of the Earth, and the Beasts that subsist on it, but the Earth it self; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest: I think it is plain, that Property in that too is acquired as the former. As much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Product of, so much is his Property.....

Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of Land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other Man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his inclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. [John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government, in Two Treatises of Government.]