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owner. Thus the foundation of the Republic was laid. In this way 

 it was done ; each citizen received at first an allotment of about two 

 English acres of land. After the expulsion of the kings, this allot- 

 ment was increased to about six acres. On the increase of the Ro- 

 man territory by conquest, the amount was increased to fifty acres, 

 afterwards to five hundred. This is something more than our Home- 

 stead Bill : or something more than the allotment to the soldiers who 

 fought our battles. This policy saved Rome, at least in that period 

 of her history, from those races of land sharks, Indian Reservation 

 thieves and murderers, railroad appropriation plotters, and great 

 ranch squatters with Cow-boy annexes, who have so shamed us, and 

 converted our politics, our legislation, and even our jurisprudence 

 into a scramble as to who should have the greatest share of plunder. 

 Ancient Rome was saved from all this by a distribution of the public 

 domain to the people, to whom it belonged, by a God-given right. 

 Two ends were secured by this agrarian policy. First, farm interests 

 were promoted. Second, the patriotism of the nation was unified, 

 intensified and wrought into a power that brought the world down 

 to the feet of Rome. Her policy was to make the nation one of 

 farmers, and while this condition lasted, and no longer, Rome ruled 

 the world. 



And thus it has been in all history, and thus I think it ever will 

 be. The farm and the farmer compose the grand conversation of 

 nations, the bulwark of their defences, and the source and fountain 

 of their prosperities. But as yet by far the greatest amount of the 

 profits have been stolen directly from the hands of the workmen. 

 The man who grows the bushel of wheat ekes out an existence, while 

 the railroad king and the speculators become millionaires. In the 

 name of God Almighty and humanity, I call for a more just equaliza- 

 tion of the profits. In the name of equity and justice I protest 

 against assigning to inert and dead matter, in the form of dollars 

 and cents, a value superior to the will and muscle that guide the 

 plow, or wield the axe, or swing the cradle, or mould and lay the 

 brick, or saw the timber, or frame and tenon it into the elegant man- 

 sion. God made the muscle and the will ; man made the dollar ; 

 and it is a confounded incongruity that the dollar the man makes 

 should become his arbitrary and irresponsible master. The founda- 

 tion of the millionaire's wealth is the will-moved muscle, and if I 

 mistake not the signs of the times, this will-moved muscle and Provi- 

 dence are on a strike for higher wages. Thus, if the millions of hard- 

 handed laborers who knock at the gates of day every morning, and 



