OPENING UP THE LAND 237 



as well. As has been shown, a handful of men own 

 105,600,000 acres of timber-land.^ They control 

 the price of timber and Imnber products as well. 

 The iron ore of the country is owned by a half- 

 dozen iron and steel corporations that acquired it 

 as waste land or at a very low figure. They have 

 capitalized it for billions of dollars. The anthra- 

 cite coal of Pennsylvania, the bituminous coaJ of 

 Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, 

 and the West and South is also owned by a few 

 great corporations. The same is true of the oil 

 and the natural gas. It is true of copper and 

 other natural deposits as well. And within a gen- 

 eration's time these deposits placed in the ground 

 by natiu-e have become the private possession of 

 monopolies which fix the prices we pay for almost 

 every necessity of life. The land in the city, whose 

 increasing value is the explanation of high rents 

 and tenement conditions, is enriching its owners 

 year by year by the growth of population and the 

 needs of society. 



Taxation is an easy means of ending these monop- 

 oHes as it is of ending the monopoly of agricultural 

 land. A slight tax on the millions of acres of timber- 

 land owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad or the 

 Weyerhauser S3aidicate would end the timber mon- 

 opoly. It would force the owners to sell. They 

 would have to let go their holdings to meet the de- 



» See Chapter XVIII, p. 209. 



