CHAPTER XVIII. 



WHAT SHALL WE DO ? 



IT has been shown in these pages that for more than 

 fifty years there has been in our country a con- 

 stant and rapid development of a power that is irre- 

 sistibly undermining the demand that, for all time 

 before, has existed for such employment of man's 

 muscular force in this country as would guarantee to 

 him at least his bodily subsistence. 



It has also been shown that at this time that power 

 has reached a development that practically throws into 

 idleness at least one half of the working force that 

 found full employment previous to 1830, and that 

 industrial demoralization and distress is seen in every 

 quarter. 



It has also been shown that this power has attacked 

 the agricultural interests of the country with a force 

 that has already broken up and destroyed many of the 

 small farms and homesteads of the people, and is mov- 

 ing on in that direction with alarming rapidity. That 

 in their place monopolists have seized upon the lands 

 in vast tracts, and have converted them into gigantic 

 food factories, worked by machinery and laborers, 

 without fixed population without women, or chil- 



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