202 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



the square mile, while in a number of countries in 

 Europe, where the soil is no more fertile than it is 

 here, ten times as many people live. 



We are familiar with the feudal ownership of 

 land in Europe and the great estates of the old 

 aristocracy in Russia, England, Germany, and 

 Austria-Hungary. Our indignation has been 

 aroused over the rack-rented tenants of Ireland 

 who, to the number of millions, were driven to 

 America by the oppressions of English landlords. 

 Great Britain is divided into great estates, owned 

 by the aristocracy, from which the people have 

 been driven into the cities, in which four-fifths of 

 the population now dwell. Persons of Scotch de- 

 scent in this country remember the stories of the 

 enclosures of the land of Scotland by the aristoc- 

 racy, of how the peasants were sent from the homes 

 their ancestors had held for centuries, of how they 

 had been driven almost into the sea, and how hun- 

 dreds of thousands of them came to America to es- 

 cape the oppressions of the landowning class. Yet, 

 while we are familiar with these conditions in Europe, 

 few people realize that a feudalism has come into 

 existence in the United States similar to that which 

 still prevails in a great part of Europe, a system 

 which, up to the French Revolution, was the pre- 

 vailing method of landownership in all of the Euro- 

 pean countries. Some American States, in fact, are 

 more closely owned than are any of the nations of 



