THE PUBLIC DOMAIN IN ITS SOCIAL ASPECT. 



leaving three-fourths entirely landless. Nature's 

 edict to man is that he shall earn his bread by his 

 labor. Since man is a land animal, it is only on land 

 that his labor can be exerted, and a denial of access 

 to land is equivalent to a sentence of death. We 

 have, therefore, nearly fifty millions of people in the 

 United States who have no legal right to existence, 

 and can remain here only on sufferance of the rest. 

 The interests of land owners as a class dictate that 

 permission shall be granted to the landless to labor 

 at the lowest rates at which, under the pressure of 

 necessity, they will consent to do it. But the power to 

 make them "get off the earth" remains unimpaired, 

 and that this power is often exercised is attested by 

 the fact that starvation does cut an important figure 

 in statistics of mortality. 



The following paragraph is from the Associated 

 Press dispatches of less than a month ago: 



NEW ORLEANS, March 28. A dispatch from Sierra Blanca, 

 describing the condition of the industrial army, states that when 

 the army arrived there some of the men were so faint from hunger 

 and exposure that they dropped in their tracks, and were picked 

 up and carried to camp by theircomrades. A beef and 400 pounds 

 of flour were at once procured by the citizens of. Sierra Blanca, 

 which made one good meal. The men were so famished that 

 their stomachs would not retain the food. Gen, Frye endeavored 

 to get the men to leave on foot, but they could not walk owing to 

 weakness. The dispatch further says that the men were gentle- 

 manly, and that there are ministers, lawyers, merchants and 

 mechanics among them. 



Adjutant-General Allen, of California, with the 



consent of Governor Markham, issued last fall the 



following circular to the various regiments of the 

 state: 



"What is the condition of the arms of your regiment? How 

 much ammunition is on hand? State the number of rounds. 

 What is the cost of S. R. cartridges, 45 calibre? What are the 

 standard weights powder ball and rifle cartridges? Has your 

 regiment reloading tools? How many men are qualified for 

 immediate service? What is needed? Reply promptly. The 

 trouble will not come until January, after the fruit, hay and grain 

 have been gathered, when an army of men will be out ot employ- 

 ment." 



It will be noticed that the men against whom these 

 warlike preparations were made were not idlers, for 

 he says there would be no danger as long as there 

 was work to be had. They were industrious Ameri- 

 can citizens, who could become dangerous only after 

 work had been denied them, and starvation gnawed 

 at their vitals. They were men who loved law and 

 order, but perhaps loved an emaciated wife or 

 hunger-pinched child more than enthroned power. 



Verily, Macaulay was right, and our institutions are 

 undergoing their test. 



So severe a test has never before been applied to 

 the institutions of any country. The land systems 

 of Europe developed with the people so slowly that 

 the speculative element was very small, and there- 

 fore the incentive to hold land idle was small. More- 

 over, the people are less intelligent than ours, and in 

 the belief that it is the divine will, are contented with 

 a lower standard of living, and to eke out a mere 

 animal existence upon donations from charity or to 

 starve in silence something the mass of Americans 

 will never consent to do. Yet in spite of their ignor- 

 ance, superstition and patience, the starving Euro- 

 peans have sometimes brought the orgies of their 

 oppressors to a sanguinary halt. The French revolu- 

 tion of 1789 is a ghastly and conspicuous example. 



There is no possible way of keeping men long out 

 of employment, except by denying them access to 

 the natural opportunities for employment. And there 

 is no conceivable method of permanently relieving 

 the unemployed, except by allowing them access to 

 land. We have here a vast empire, more productive 

 than any similar area on the globe, which we have 

 scracely begun to scratch. A continent capable of 

 supporting in ease and opulence at least twenty 

 times its present population We allow an insignificant 

 fraction of our number, or of foreigners, to hold 

 umtsed enough of the bounties of nature to furnish 

 employment to the entire population of the globe, 

 in order that they may reap the value imparted to 

 the land by the growth and industry of the com- 

 munity. 



To what purpose do we discuss the public land 

 policy, if we are not to point out the effects flowing 

 from it? If these effects are bad, is it not equally 

 pertinent to suggest remedies? The diagnosis of a 

 disease avails nothing, if we are to apply neither 

 prevention nor cure. 



The optimistic fatalism so fashionable to-day is 

 apt to reply that the impending social cataclysm is 

 certain to be averted by the good sense of the 

 American people. That in their own good time, and 

 before it is too late, they will discover and apply the 

 remedy. I fully believe this myself, but not in the 

 fatalistic sense. We are a part of the American peo- 

 ple, and if such intelligent and patriotic persons as I 

 see before me to-night do not propose to bestir 

 themselves to studiously discover and industriously 

 seek to apply the true remedy, how can we expect 

 those less intelligent, who are harrassed with poverty, 

 tormented with hunger, and pinched with cold to be 

 more scientific and patriotic than we? 



