We will now apply the principle of Confiscation to land, and we will see
that Confiscation alone can undo the wrong that has of late become
apparent to even the law makers in Washington. Up to within three years
or so there were two ways by which farming lands could be obtained from
the Government - by homesteading and preempting.
It is unnecessary to give the laws of either, but so fast was this class
of land going that Congress repealed the preemption law. In other words,
the amount you could obtain was cut down one half - from 320 acres to
160. What was more significant still of their barn door work after the
horse was gone, they made the owning of 160 acres, regardless from whom
it was got, private purchase or Government, a bar to the taking up of
Government farm land. Prior to the repeal every citizen, and those
intending to become citizens, had certain land rights, and owning half a
State did not impair them; which all goes to show that even this free
and easy-going Government thought it about time to call a halt. But that
was all it did do. As it was not necessary to give the laws under which
the homesteader and preemptor got title, neither is it necessary to here
ask how some men became owners of all the way from 1,000 to 60,000
acres, every acre of which was Government land years after California
became a State. (We are using California facts. The rest of the Western
part of the United States has an abundance of the same kind.) Suffice it
to say, that they now own them; and suffice it too, that Confiscation is
the only way by which we can dispossess them of plunder, that the
welfare of the country demands should be returned? In Confiscation alone
will the people find a servant who will not condone the past, but will
follow up this breed of the grabber and restore what it finds, as it has
already done with others of his tribe.
It will be the re-discovering of America.
Never did kind and beneficent laws show what men, with the right kind of
stuff in them, could do, as did our land laws. Men who now own territory
as large as some of the Eastern States started in without a dollar.
They had something better. They had consciences that was good for any
tests that the scoundrels could put them to. Never did gangs of
"floaters" help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the public
treasury with greater success than did this other brand of the bastard
citizen help his boss to hog the public domain.
In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land that would give one
hundred and sixty acre homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand
people) is owned by one hundred individuals, all average of sixteen
thousand acres to each owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and
leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thousand acres.
In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer in search of work can walk
for days in one direction alongside of fencing that incloses land
belonging to one firm. And this immense fortune-in land was obtained by
robbery, just as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained.
In the land office we see the miserable tool and his master.
In the legislative halls we see the miserable tool and his master.
And we see the leaves on Liberty's Tree droop and wither as these deadly
borers do their work under the bark below.
Up among the peaks and valleys of the Sierra Nevada lies the town of
Mariposa, settled by gold seekers whose rich findings gave world wide
fame to this hamlet among the mountains. Aluvial gold and quartz bearing
gold was scattered with lavish hand through the surrounding hills, and
in the beds of the summer-dried streams. Generous laws of their own
making, gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled on, forgetting the
past hardships of the long journey where so many fell by the way, and
the rugged hills became endeared to them as they marked out the shaded
spots on their shelving sides where their coming dear ones could look
down on the busy scene below. But the camp follower with ready knife
never finished the wounded brave quicker than did the "land grant"
swindler finish Mariposa when her riches became the theme of every gold
camp throughout the world. And to-day the big hearted and stalwart miner
goes to fever-laden Africa and ice-bound Alaska, when there are whole
mountains of the best mineral bearing land in the world in his own
country, but which our present laws forbid him to touch.
Our people should no more bow to a Mexican land grant title than to a
superstition of their cave-dwelling ancestors.
What matters it, however, in what way these colossal robberies were
committed; by coffee-stained lie from Mexico, or perjured oath of
faithless citizen; it has been done, and it is time for the undoing.
Man developed the school house, and for this each is indebted to the
other, and the mutual debt is acknowledged by making the school free to
all.
The Creator developed the Earth from chaos to the habitable home of man,
free to all, but this debt is not acknowledged, and the many are driven
into the highway by the few.
Give us all the conveniences of modern life, railroads, telegraphs,
etc., etc., etc., but give us back the land, that is our natural
heritage as much as is the water we drink or the air we breath.
Give us back this birthright, or take your railroads, and so on, and
your civilization, and sink them deep in the depths of hell, for the
starving have no use for them, and we'll take the savage state that
knows no hunger except in the time of famine.