HENRY GEORGE'S REMEDY. 1 35 



the usurer, but through their struggle to keep on with 

 their enterprises, and to meet the demands of society 

 levied upon them, their debts were increased, interest 

 ceased to be paid, and finally the mortgagee took them 

 over to save his money. In the vast majority of cases 

 to-day the owners of tenanted farms would gladly sell 

 them off at a good discount on the amounts which they 

 have invested in them. They have no desire to be land- 

 lords, and it has only been through the failure of the 

 mortgageors that they have become so possessed with 

 land. 



The tendency of the present time in America is to de- 

 stroy love for country life — to denude the farmer of 

 the sentiments that should impel him to hand down to 

 his own posterity, intact, the lands of his forefathers, 

 with all their valued associations. The single tax is cal- 

 culated to give greater impetus to this most undesirable 

 tendency. It is to increase this tendency with those 

 who engage in rural pursuits, for them to look upon 

 the farm as only a great factory for material purposes, 

 and material purposes only. The farms subjected to it 

 would become more and more the possession of those 

 who would look upon them only as the medium through 

 which to gain riches. Its adoption would be but to 

 give more stimulus to a tendency which Mr. George 

 dilates upon as an evil of great proportions already — 

 "bonanza farming." "These machine-worked 'grain 

 factories ' of our Great Republic of the New World are 

 doing just what was done by the slave-worked lati- 

 fundia of the Roman world. Here, they prevent, where 

 there, they destroyed, ' the crop of men.' " ' The whole- 

 sale system of agriculture, gathering more and more 



' " The Land Question," p. 59. 



