1S8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



citizens from this property. The land grants made this familiar to the 

 mass of the people and accredited it as a practise. Special grants to 

 citizens, if they could be classified in any way as developmental in their 

 outcome, were favored. Farms, franchises and tariffs were freely given 

 and received. What are referred to now as " special privileges " were 

 merely species of an approved genus. 



When the ideas that the country was boundlessly rich and that it 

 should be lavishly generous prevailed, it is not to be wondered at that 

 the officials who were administering the division of the wealth should 

 feel no hesitancy about taking toll of whatever passed through their 

 hands. Graft was a normal collateral result of current practise and is 

 to be distinguished from embezzlement or larceny. The officers were 

 like men passing through a dripping orchard. To pluck and eat was to 

 follow a natural impulse, easily yielded to when everybody was receiving 

 according to their needs. 



Out of these conditions of our first hundred years came the ethics of 

 acquisition as a result of our method of exploiting a rich continent; a 

 code which justified the accumulation of wealth by the process of taking 

 it. This was normal and natural. The pertinent question now is, why 

 has it become, or why is it becoming immoral ? 



A structure is no more stable than its foundation. The phase of 

 public morals discussed here rested upon the fact that the people were 

 carving up the public domain and trying to increase the value of their 

 individual portions. When the good lands of the common heritage had 

 passed from the government's control the general run of citizens had 

 nothing to expect from the public directly. With the extension of the 

 network of railways and other methods of communication over the 

 country at large and the local areas as well, and after the rise of manu- 

 factures on a large scale, the prospect of further benefits from further 

 opening of the country did not exist for the major portion of the people. 

 When the populace can no longer look for immediate or collateral bene- 

 fits of a private nature from governmental grants the policy of distribu- 

 tion is doomed in a democracy. Donations widely scattered may be 

 approved, but if the range is narrowed they become evidences of 

 favoritism and discrimination. As soon as the voters become conscious 

 of the situation they will wipe out the remnants of the system. While 

 " conservation " means both preservation of our natural resources in 

 themselves and their future use for the people as a whole, the popular 

 support behind the movement at present is in the nature of a demand 

 that " landgrabbing " be stopped. What can no longer be done by all 

 will not be permitted to any. 



The swift growth of population has exhausted what once seemed to 

 be a limitless territory. With the disappearance of good free lands falls 

 the notion that the government of itself abounds in wealth. Men have 



