58 LAND AND LABOR. 



they see, or touch, or produce. In this way the finest 

 sections of our country, in tracts running up to the 

 size of eight hundred or more square miles areas 

 that would give fifty acres of plowland to more than 

 a thousand families, and to our fathers would have 

 furnished homes, ample employment, and comfort to 

 more than ten thousand people are now without 

 even one home, and furnish but transient and uncer- 

 tain employment to a few hundreds. 



This state of things is made possible, and is obtain- 

 ing, solely by and under the power and use of ma- 

 chinery ; first in the hands of individual capitalists ; 

 then in the hands of companies ; and, lastly, by 

 corporations. 



The owners of these large tracts have bonanzas, 

 yielding great profits, not one dollar of which is ex- 

 pended in beautifying and permanently improving 

 their vast estates, beyond that necessary for the care 

 of the stock and tools, nor in sustaining a permanent 

 population. Their homes, their pleasures, their fam- 

 ily ties, are not upon their farms. Their wealth is 

 llauntnl in the gaieties and dissipations, or expended 

 in building and developing some distant city or coun- 

 try. But the owner and cultivator of the small farm 

 in its neighborhood, upon which he has planted his 

 roof tree, and around which are gathered all his hopes 



! ambitions, finds it impossible to pay his ta\ 



clothe and educate, or find any comfort for his wife 



i little ones. The case of the small farmer is 



steadily going from bad to worse. The two can not 



t together ; the small fanner can not successfully 



c<ftnpetc with his gigantic neighbor under present 



