86 LAND AND LABOR. 



be obtained, for all that they possess. A reference to 

 the chapter on " The Bonanza Farms " will be found 

 instructive in this connection. 



The entire agricultural regions of our country are 

 crowded with loan agents, representing capital from 

 all the great money centers of the world, who are 

 making loans and taking mortgages upon the forms 

 to an amount that, in the aggregate, appears to be 

 almost beyond calculation. In this movement the 

 local capitalists, lawyers, and traders, appear as active 

 coworkers. During the past season, whilst a short 

 time in St. Lawrence County, New York, I learned 

 of one Hebrew trader, about forty years of age, in 

 Ogdensburg, who, as reported, first made his appear- 

 ance in that city with a pack upon his back, that had, 

 through trade, liberal credit to the farmers, interest, 

 mortgages, and foreclosures, become the owner of six- 

 teen farms, occupied by that number of tenants. A 

 lawyer was pointed out who, by similar processes, was 

 the owner of ten farms ; and others in lesser degree. 



These results mark the growth of what one of our 

 ablest men most truly terms " the towering tyranny 

 of capital," and what another, a popular political 

 economist, insanely calls "the beneficent action of 

 competition." Here is exhibited a development in 

 the monopoly of the lands of our country, and an ex- 

 tension of the tenant system, that dwarfs to littleness 

 any tiling that the world has before witnessed. In 

 England the proudest of her aristocrats, the mightiest 

 of her nobility, her greatest landlords, find their limits 

 of possession a long way within two hundred thousand 

 acres, and there are but three who hold more than one 



