MANAGEMENT 229 



Arthur Young's famous dictum that " The magic of property 

 Urns sand into gold " was inspired by the spectacle of the 

 small peasant proprietors of northern Europe laboring inces- 

 santly upon their tiny plots of land and bringing tracts of barren 

 waste to a high degree of fertility. Like all such aphorisms, it 

 states a certain large truth, but does not take the place of a scien- 

 tific treatise. It was not the magic of property, or any other form 

 of magic, but merely patient labor under the pressure of dire need, 

 which forced these people to undertake the painful, heartbreak- 

 ing toil of wresting a meager living from the sand dunes which 

 Young describes. That they succeeded is greatly to the credit of 

 those sturdy, courageous people who could not be daunted by 

 the prospect of hard work and frugal fare. There have always 

 been as good opportunities in England, and there are just as 

 good opportunities in New England to-day, for property to work 

 its magic, if there is any magic about it, as there ever were in 

 Europe. And the English farm laborers and the immigrants 

 into New England are as sturdy and courageous as were those 

 continental peasants ; but the pressure of need has not been so 

 severe in England or New England. The simple fact is, that 

 the sturdy English laborer could make a better living by working 

 for wages, or, if he were sufficiently capable, by leasing good 

 land, than he could by reclaiming the kind of waste land which 

 Young describes, and by the laborious methods of the people 

 whom he praises. Similarly, the immigrants into New England 

 can generally do better at something else than at the work of 

 reclaiming waste land under the stimulus of private property. 

 However, on Cape Cod and elsewhere there are a few notable 

 cases of market and fruit farms created in unpromising situations 

 by Portuguese and Italian immigrants. Even in these cases,' 

 however, the standard of living is low ; but they show what 

 can be done by our growing population if the conditions ever 

 become bad enough to force people to it. There is very little 



