EDITORIAL 



237 



such a movement should compare fa- 

 vorably in importance with the Peace 

 Conferences already held at The Hague. 

 And with peace, inter-communication, 

 the fuller acquaintance following from 

 comparison of views at short range and 

 the realization that the aims of all na- 

 tions, as of all individuals, are sub- 

 stantially identical, there must neces- 

 sarily follow a closer knitting of the 

 bonds of international fraternity and 

 a hastening of the realization of the 

 poet's dream of 



"The parliament of man. 

 The federation of the world." 



^ ^ ^ 



Private "Rights" in Public Lands 



T^HE familiar controversy in the pub- 

 i lie land states over the gradual at- 

 tempts of the National Government to 

 resume its rights in the public lands 

 suggests another of the parallels with 

 which history abounds. The most 

 striking, perhaps, is that between our 

 own case and that of Rome. Like the 

 United States, Rome held at times vast 

 areas of public lands. Like ourselves, 

 again, she was exceedingly careless in 

 the administration of these properties, 

 and allowed them to drift, in vast areas, 

 into the hands of private citizens. 

 \yhere, with us, these public benefi- 

 ciaries are frequently great cattlemen, 

 sheepmen, lumbermen, and the like; 

 with the Romans, they were the great 

 nobles and capitalists. As with us, graz- 

 ing among the Romans, by 200 B. C, 

 had become a vast and highly profitable 

 industry. Much of the rural population 

 had been destroyed by Hannibal. Much 

 of what remained was evicted, as in 

 the sheep-grazing days of the English 

 Tudors, that farming districts might 

 be converted into pasture lands where 

 cattle were tended by slaves. Rome's 

 administration was, apparently, an im- 

 provement upon ours in one respect; 

 she at least pretended to charge these 

 occupants a tithe of the produce as a 

 rental. In the collection of this, how- 

 ever, she was extremely lax, and occu- 

 pants nominally tenants-at-will treated 



the lands as their private property, even 

 to the extent of selling them. 



As population increased, evictions 

 multiplied, and the numbers of landless 

 proletarians became congested in the 

 capital, the necessity became obvious 

 for making the public lands available 

 for such, and thus transforming men, 

 otherwise beggars and disturbers of the 

 social order, into self-supporting, self- 

 respecting heads of families. 



From time to time, therefore, at- 

 tempts were made on the part of the 

 state to resume, in part, its rights in 

 the public lands. Such attempts, how- 

 ever, were resisted by the aristocratic 

 occupants of those lands, even to the 

 point of bloodshed. 



The struggle over the public lands 

 began early. About twenty-four years 

 after the expulsion of Tarquinius Su- 

 perbus, the consul, Spurius Cassius, at- 

 tempted, by means of a so-called "agra- 

 rian law," to make a portion of the 

 public lands available to citizens, and 

 to compel the occupants of other public 

 lands to pay their rents to the govern- 

 ment. The attempt, however, was 

 frustrated by the aristocracy, and Cas- 

 sius, on his retirement from office, was 

 accused of attempting to make himself 

 king. He was condemned, scourged, 

 and beheaded, and his house destroyed. 

 In 367 B. C. the tribune, Licinius 

 Stolo, secured the enactment of an 

 agrarian law entitling each citizen to 

 occupy not more than 500 jugera (250 

 acres) of state lands, and to pasture 

 stock upon the public pasture lands. 



By 133. when Tiberius Gracchus was 

 elected tribune, this law had fallen into 

 desuetude. The state, meanwhile, had 

 acquired vast tracts of land; but these 

 had passed not to the needy poor, in 

 accordance with the Licinian law, but 

 to the aristocracy of birth and wealth. 

 Tiberius proposed that every father of 

 a family might occupy 500 jugera of 

 state lands for himself, and that each 

 of his sons might have 250 jugera, the 

 total for one family not to exceed 1,000 

 jugera; while all holdings in excess of 

 these figures should be resumed by the 

 state, with payment to occupants for 

 improvements made by them. Tiberius 



