Limit the ownership of land, be it arable, grazing, timber, or any other
kind, to 160 acres. As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth of
property all told, this 160 acres will have to be reduced as we get near
to the centres of population. This will still give the owner of such
convenient land an advantage over those living further out, who will
always be willing to exchange should the first rather follow the coarser
grades of farming to dairying or gardening.
Neither is there any reason why the owning of great sections of timber
land by one or two men should be necessary to the running of sawmills
and supplying the people with lumber. The mills are capable of doing
just as good work if the fifty quarter sections are owned by fifty men
as they are if owned by one man. And the waste of timber seen on every
hand wherever you find a mill owned and operated by capitalists would
have been unknown if there had been an individual owner to each quarter
section. The wanton waste of this breed of the capitalist, in his hurry
to pile up, would have been impossible had his mill been a "custom"
mill, to saw the timber from your quarter section and mine instead of
his fifty or five hundred. And the poor unskilled laborer would not have
to go to make room for the chinaman, or that member of a worthless tribe
who sold his "claim" to the "company" for so much and the promise of a
job. The small owner cannot afford the waste of the large one. His
income will not be so great that he can afford to waste the principal
from which it comes. As to any friction about whose turn it is to run
his timber through, it is only necessary to say that the business will
be then carried on by those who are now doing the labor, and it will be
no worse to accept wages from the man on the neighboring claim for
helping him to make lumber than it was to accept wages from the man who
was dethroned, and he will probably pay you as much as you could make
running your own logs through.
If this is not satisfactory, sell out at once to one of the many that
are waiting to buy, and go, for you will not find anything in what we
are advocating that interferes in the least with the liberty of the
individual. Some may think differently, but then they are the ones who
brought all eyes to the window to see what was going on in the street.
And as you travel on you will miss the once eager dog at the farm house
by the way, and no palsied hand will be lifting the corner of the
curtain as you are passing by, for the tramp has disappeared, and the
rare survivor and incurable will be doing it on bread and water, for he
must be a useless thing not to have drawn his last breath with his
compatriot at the other end of the scale.
The farmer who has children that are not of age when the new arrangement
goes into force will see great hardship in the 160-acre law. He intended
to give this piece of land to one son and that piece to another, and so
on. He would give each of these sons more, but some one else owns the
rest of the country thereabouts, and these, say, 160-acre tracts, are
the best he can do. Leaving out of the question whether his sons can
locate alongside of himself or not, and confining ourselves to their
chance of being able to get 160 acres, which is the vital point in the
whole matter, he must see that, if he must surrender his excess and all
others must do the same, there would be more land to take up than there
are people to take it. We are in a Republic, Mr. Farmer, and the
interest of the many who have called at your door call on you to
disgorge with the rest.
When we come to the land in the mountains we find that it averages poor,
yet the 160-acre law must be applied there also. To allow more would be
to give an opening to the smart one, who would take advantage as he has
always done; and as the country is pretty well tired of him we will save
future complications by tying him down to 160 acres like the rest. The
mountain farmer or rancher, with rare exceptions, gets his income from
the raising of pork or beef animals, which are rarely confined to the
owner's premises, but are allowed to roam and graze where they will, at
times as far as forty and fifty miles away from where they belong. And
as the mountaineer makes little if any provisions for the barn feeding
of his animals, outside of one or two milk cows and his few work
animals, and these last only through the work season and the bad weather
of whatever winter the locality may have, he will not find his business
of raising meat for the market curtailed in any respect. Should he need
more hay or grain ground, or ground for orchards or gardens, be will
always find it inside of his 160-acre inclosure, for there are none yet
among them who knows the possibilities of a 160-acre ranch under the
plow. And as none has yet been forced to put the plow into outside
ground, it can be taken for granted that they never will.
Where, then, is the reason why this class of farmers should be allowed
title to more land than the others? The range or grazing ground among
the hills and along the water courses will still be open to their
animals, and instead of the proposed change injuring their business, it
will, in these days of cheap barb-wire, stop the would-be cattle king
and speculative grabber from crippling or destroying it altogether, a
fate not unknown to some who have tried in a small way to make a living
from cattle raising.
There is, therefore, no reason why the farmer in the hills should be
allowed more land than his less favored brother in the valleys and
plains below. He must fall into line with the rest; and, as he takes his
place at the foot the assembled multitude of liberated slaves, sees a
gleam of scorn in the eyes of the once mighty railroad king as this poor
relation is thrust upon his notice.
But it is not in a brave people to humiliate a fallen enemy, and the
order to break ranks is given, and the ex-slave and ex-master mingle
together, and depart to work out a destiny common to both.
-
In the preceding pages we have briefly tried to show that Confiscation
is the only peaceable way that is now open to us by which the people can
again obtain possession of their country. And we have tried to convey an
idea of how its principle should be applied, and we will now turn our
attention to its workings, and show, as briefly as possible, how easy it
is for the people to be prosperous when they have control of their
country's resources.
There is not a railroad in the country that would not be taxed to its
utmost in carrying settlers to the forfeited lands; and the work of the
land agent and boomer, the uphill work of the town or section in trying
to build themselves up by advertising far and near, and the hauling of
cars full of exhibition pumpkins crossways and lengthways of the land,
would be needless. Government land, be it County, State or United
States, never requires booming in these days of the anxious home-seeker,
and never will again.
At present when a new section becomes attractive there is a rush into
it, and then the rush slacks up with an air-brake suddenness. The
speculator has got there and pitched his tent, and his $100 to $500 acre
signs - part down, the rest at 8 per cent. - has taken possession, and
the stream is turned aside and goes elsewhere. And then the pumpkin,
with its 8 per cent. tags plastered all over it, is put aboard and
hauled through the country on its mission of deceiving the innocent.
With the land speculator out of the way, and no expenses outside of
office fees, there would be a steady increase of population wherever
there is agricultural land, until the last acre is in possession of an
actual settler, whose home would be on the place. (The principle which
allows a man living in New York, or somewhere else, to own land in
California, or somewhere else, should set every law-maker to scratching
his head to see if he cannot get an idea out of it.)
And do not plague yourselves about the numerosity of the new settler,
and where the whole of him is to find a market. We are trying to get rid
of the pauper, and whoever heard of a farm, free of the 8 per cent.
night-mare, being the breeding place of such as he? Whatever else
happens to the farmer he at least is sure of enough to eat. Wheat may be
down; cattle without buyers; eggs a drug; potatoes left to rot in the
ground, milk wasting like water, and not ten cents in money on the
premises, but the owner is not starving. The dude may not see a brother
in him, and he will be denied entrance to the Inner Circle when Major
domo McAllister sees him in the rear. But he has weight, and looks as if
trying to get away with this year's crop, to make room for the next,
agrees with him; and if he thinks now and again of the days of the
hungry tramp it must be that the undertaking has proportions he little
dreamed of.
But he will have a market. What causes him to need one? This. That he
may be able to get that which he does not produce or make himself. And
is there not some one else producing or making those very things, and
who needs what the farmer alone produces or makes? If yes, then we have
found the whole secret of what we call business - two producers or
makers of different articles making an exchange one with the other. Stop
that exchange, and there would be no manufacturing; we would all be
living off raw nature once more, and our ball-games would give way to
the pelting of cocoanuts and hanging by our tails.