THE TENANT FARMS. 87 



hundred thousand acres each. But in our country 

 the possessions of individual capitalists pass far be- 

 yond the hundreds of thousands into the millions of 

 acres, and the corporations into the tens of millions. 



The tenant system of Great Britain has been the 

 growth of ages of more than a thousand years 

 fashioned and welded by the bloody swords and law- 

 less brutalities of generations of robber barons and 

 rulers who governed only to plunder ; whose unwrit- 

 ten law was, " let him get who hath the power,, and 

 let him keep who can." But with us the tenant sys- 

 tem is the growth of only about a / quarter of a cen- 

 tury, under the operations of written law, and already 

 it has reached a magnitude that belittles the work of 

 the feudal barons. 



Surely the little finger of our plutocracy has become 

 thicker for evil, mightier for crushing, than was ever 

 the loins of baronial power in the time of its greatest 

 strength. 



