Confiscation; An Outline Part 4

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 t.i.tle than to a superst.i.tion 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 h.e.l.l, 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.

X.

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 coa.r.s.er 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.s of farmers should be allowed t.i.tle 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 a.s.sembled mult.i.tude 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.

XI.

The opening of these forfeited lands would be the salvation of that pitiable creature, the victim of the 8 per cent. grind. The homeless wanderer can get shade and shelter from the burning sun and driving storm, and with these is content, for he has long since resigned ambition to those who are willing to continue the hopeless struggle; but the man, on the 8 per cent. treadmill, who has not yet acknowledged defeat, has no way of escape from the glare of the master's eye, except by self-murder or the pauper's grave. There is nothing that excites our hatred against the infamous laws of our times as much as does the sight of this brave man struggling against the fate that is crushing him, and whose patriotism will soon be kindred to that of the Russian serfs, if it does not go to the other extreme and make him a nihilist or some other brand of the political desperado. It was from this quarter, forget it not, that the old flint locks came, "whose report was heard around the world," and the serf will never be his model, for the old spirit has still enough of life left for another blaze, as these new oppressors will find to their awful cost.

The burdens which these people are staggering under can be easily imagined when it is known that they have been paying interest on mortgages for years that the places would not now sell for, even after they were improved by years of labor and the outlay of much money. In the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there are homesteads by the thousands that will not sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the extraordinary spectacle was witnessed in the city of San Francisco last year of a bank having to close because it could not sell out the valley farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course these farmers obtained money from the bank, and the justice of the bank's claim is not what we are now trying to get at, but to show that if we had the laws that belong to a republic the people would not be the victims of bankers or any one else. Had they been allowed in the first place to take possession of all unimproved land without having to give up the savings of years to some land grabber, whose theft was authorized and sustained by law, and then loaded down with interest obligations, they would have had no more trouble in keeping their land than they would in keeping an arm or a leg.

With every one limited to 160 acres there would be so much thrown open to settlement that it would practically wipe out all mortgages on land, for the occupant of mortgaged premises, could give his owner the option of accepting what would be a fair price under the new conditions, and if it were refused then the occupant could simply back his wagon up, put his portables on and drive to some of the Government land nearest to him.

And it should not be so difficult to get the fencing and the lumber for the few small buildings that would answer till he could get better, and, once started, his condition would be a steady improvement, the interest he now pays remaining on the premises where it is made. At present there are the usual fences and buildings put up when the land is bought (part down, the rest at 8 per cent.), and these are the only improvements, outside of vine and tree growth, that can be made; the wear of time even cannot be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of modern life, interest obligations.

The cost of moderately sized buildings would of course depend on circ.u.mstances, but it should not exceed a few hundred dollars; and as it would be a more profitable investment for a county to help a settler, that is already on the ground, to get a start, than to spend the money trying to get him there, as is the practice now, there can be no serious reason why the voters should not authorize their local Government to extend the necessary aid, and make it optional with the borrower whether he shall pay in money or work; the length of time and other details to be governed by circ.u.mstances, but no interest to be charged. If this last causes some apparent loss, let it be charged to the old pumpkin fund.

There are people of small means who have taken mortgages on land, and these must be protected, as we have already done in the case of like investors in paper-represented property. But if these small lenders are already owners of one hundred and sixty acres they must make the best terms they can with their debtors, for it is a cardinal idea of this needed readjustment that no one shall own more than 160 acres. But if the lender does not own that amount of land, he can get and hold t.i.tle as at present.

The result of the proposed change being to keep the income of the whole country within its own borders, it follows that every section must find itself with an abundance of capital such as was never known to them before, giving them the means to carry on improvements that are entirely beyond them now. At the present time, too, if a laborer, through errors of judgment, should lose the savings of his years of youth and strength, he can rarely recover the ground lost, and finds that paying his way from day to day thereafter is all he can do, and when his work days are gone for good he must either go to the poor-house or be cared for by his relations, whose own load is about all they can bear up under. With the income kept where it is made all this is would be changed, for then, instead of having work only a part of the time, and poor wages besides, the laborer, when his work for private parties gave out, could get work from the local Government, which always has it to give, and the money to pay for it. And should a laborer here and there through some unforeseen cause, be forced by poverty and age to accept food and shelter that he cannot pay for, his relations can provide for him, for the getting of the mere food and clothing will not be the momentous question that it is now. And this power of the local Government to give work will save many a one from a fate that should never overtake the honest and willing.

Pauperism and crime can never be eliminated from society, any more than the susceptibility to sickness and disease can be eliminated from flesh and blood, but as civilization grows older its acc.u.mulating wisdom should be more than a match for poverty, the parent germ of both pauperism and crime; but the discouraging fact is that these two diseases of civilized society are advancing faster than civilization itself, and we build larger poor houses and jails, and then sit down and nurse the hideous disorders, as if they were the incurable rot of leprosy instead of being the result of economic laws that allow the able to rob the weak.

There is not a county or State but what has plenty of work had it the money to do it. The question of good roads is becoming prominent, but if they are ever built under our present system of economics they will be built by slave labor pure and simple. It is absolutely out of the question for the people to raise the money for running the Government; pay interest on bonds; pay for the bonds themselves; pay pensions; carry on the costly work of giving the whole country macadamized roads, and care for the millionaire, and remain free at the same time.

Government expenses.

Pensions.

Interest on bonds.

Matured bonds.

Macadamized roads.

Care of millionaire.

To think of carrying such a load and remain free is madness.

We are contending that the country is already crushed with debt; that she is saddled with such a tremendous load, that, like the mortgaged farm, improvement and progress is utterly out of the question. We have the resources for any and every improvement that the country needs, but they are wasted and squandered paying interest to foreign capitalists, and supporting our mushroom growth of millionaire parasites, who are the cause of our poverty of capital, and the foreigners' ability to lend us money.

Do away with interest paying and the millionaire, and the required roads could be commenced at once, and as for the Nicaragua ca.n.a.l, we would make as light of it as does the farmer in hoeing a hill of beans.