THE MORMON COMMONWEALTH 



The economic life of Utah is founded on the general 

 ownership of land. Speaking broadly, all are proprie- 

 tors, none are tenants. Land monopoly was discounte- 

 nanced from the beginning. All were encouraged to 

 take so much land as they could apply to a beneficial 

 purpose. None were permitted to secure land merely to 

 hold it out of use for speculation. The corner-stone of 

 the system was industrialism the theory that all should 

 work for what they were to have, and that all should 

 have what they had worked for. In order to realize 

 this result, it was necessary that each family should own 

 as much land as it could use to advantage, and no more. 



The adoption of this principle was plainly due to the 

 peculiar conditions which the leader saw about him. He 

 instantly realized that value resided in water rather than 

 in land ; that there was much more land than water ; 

 that water could only be conserved and distributed at 

 great expense. 



If he had settled in a land of abundant rainfall it is 

 improbable that he would have set such severe limitations 

 upon the amount of land which individuals should ac- 

 quire. In that case he would, perhaps, have thought it 

 well for his people to take all the land they could possibly 

 obtain under the law, and thus enjoy large speculative 

 possibilities. But if he had pursued this policy in Utah 

 he could not have accommodated the thousands whom 

 he expected to follow him in the early future. He thus 

 found it imperatively necessary to restrict the amount of 

 laud which each family should acquire, suiting it to their 

 actual needs. He came from a country which had been 

 settled in farms ranging from two hundred to four hun- 

 dred acres in size. The reduction in the farm unit 



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