OLD IDEALS AND NEW CONDITIONS 



individual proprietorship. When this race planted itself 

 in England it immediately took firm possession of the soil. 

 It was thus that it was able to overcome the Celts, to 

 absorb the Angles, to buy off and then repel the Danes, 

 and even to survive the Norman conquerors. 



When the children of the Saxon farmers and small 

 tradesmen first settled in America they proceeded to 

 make immediate provision against the possibility of land- 

 lordism and great estates. They did this by rejecting the 

 law of primogeniture, by distributing the land equally 

 among all the children of the deceased, and by mak- 

 ing transfers of land among the living as easy as pos- 

 sible. So they rooted their democracy in the owner- 

 ship of the soil. Individual proprietors owned homes 

 and farms, and rose or fell according to their thrift and 

 industry, or their lack of these qualities. Individual in- 

 itiative was left untrammelled, yet in things beyond the 

 reach of the one man the colonists acted upon a plan 

 of natural and simple co-operation. Fishing was their 

 first industry, and here they worked in groups, each man 

 sharing the catch in proportion to the value of his ser- 

 vice. The social and religious life of the community 

 was highly organized for the time and place. 



The tendencies of development in the West, and the 

 definite plans of colonization suggested in previous chap- 

 ters of this book, are distinctly in line with the traditions 

 of the Anglo-Saxon race so far as land ownership is con- 

 cerned. There are, and there are to be yet more in the 

 future, vast multitudes of men secure in the possession 

 of small landed estates. These men are free to use their 

 land as they see fit, and to have the exclusive enjoyment 

 of the fruits of their own labor. They do not depend 



299 'TON ACCESSION 



BANCROFT LIBRARY 



