128 LAND AND LABOR. 



whole proceedings taken to be such as would avoid 

 the accumulations of cost, and the vexatious delays 

 that inevitably tend to defeat all substantial relief. 



The three measures here suggested, if adopted, viz. : 

 a law restoring the public domain to the action of 

 the homestead provisions, another regulating taxa- 

 tion, a law for the cure of the evil of tenant farming, 

 and effective measures for the redistribution of labor, 

 would certainly have the effect of calling all into ac- 

 tive employment and removing enforced idleness and 

 poverty from the land ; of breaking up the large 

 landed estates, and restoring the land to the people, 

 for independent and prosperous homes ; and would 

 put an end to tenant farming. 



Only one other measure is required to effectually 

 break the back of plutocratic monopoly ; and that is, 

 a law to compel the equal division of estates among 

 the natural heirs. Laws that permit a parent to rob 

 any portion of his children for the benefit of others, 

 whether in or out of the family, are just as much 

 against public policy as to permit the betrayal of any 

 other trust with which one may be clothed, by either 

 human or Divine law. The parent, in this respect, 

 stands in the relation of a trustee of interests which, 

 under the highest obligations that unite families and 

 bind man to man, all the children have a natural and 

 equal right in and to, and one that a parent should 

 not be permitted to ignore or violate. A parent 

 should possess testamentary power for adjusting and 

 equalizing between his heirs the benefits that may 

 li.ivc been received and are to come ; and to make 

 provision for the care of the persons and portions of 



