LAND. GOLD AND JOURNALISM. 



HERE are two great 

 and strong Anglo-Sax- 

 on words which mean 

 much and with which 

 all men have to deal. 

 Land is one ; gold the 

 other. We hear of 

 gold a thousand times, 

 however, for once that 

 we hear of land, the 

 greater and elder. 

 " Land, Labor and Capital" has become a famous 

 war-cry, to be sure, but do the American horticul- 

 turists keep sufficient track of what is being said 

 about that from which they wrest their daily bread 

 — the land they live upon, and hold by title-deed or 

 lease ? 



The other day I looked up this matter from a 

 new standpoint. I took Rowell's newspaper list, 

 turned to the agricultural pages, and then went to 

 the libraries. I examined the agricultural papers, 

 the outdoor departments of the dailies, the horti- 

 cultural publications, the papers for bee-keepers, 

 poultry-growers, the live-stock raisers, and in brief 

 for all the class of men whose interests are, in the 

 good old English phase, "landed interests." I 

 looked at more than three hundred different publica- 

 tions, and I found them all filled to the brim with 

 " good and valuable material " of a small and per- 

 ennial sort, such as we all know something of, and 

 might doubtless know more, but could possibly 

 manage to live without if we never heard another 

 word on the subject. I was glad to know that 

 alum water will turn my hydrangeas blue, and that 

 Jones Fitzmaurice has built a new orchid house, 

 and I accumulated a great many hints, scraps, 

 notions and fragmentary ideas from my day's 

 reading. But one thing, I must confess, I did not 

 find anywhere, and what that was I shall tell you 

 presently. 



Tariff discussions were there to some extent, 

 though seldom single-hearted, and " gold, " that is 

 "money" or "profit," or "surplus," or "in- 

 crease " filled up a large part of many items and 

 articles, and I found its gleaming outcroppings on 

 many a barren statistical ledge. I had no reason to 

 think that the old Anglo-Saxon word in any of its 

 wealth-meanings was being neglected. 



In one sense, too, the papers published for the 

 men who live by the soil were full of remarks about 

 "land." Everywhere it was: "Plow your land 

 deeply," "do not mortgage your land," "feed your 

 land and it will feed you." I was well enough 

 satisfied that the publications I had been studying 

 were well up in "soils, crops, cultures," and all 

 that. The men who wrote for them knew a great 

 deal more in this line I did. Their readers were 

 working hard to grow "two blades of grass where 

 one had grown before," and to get finer roses, more 

 luscious peaches, hardier oranges and an infinite 

 number of other improvements. 



Nevertheless I laid down the three hundred jour- 

 nals referred to with a very profound sense of sur- 

 prise, which, instead of dissipating with reflection, 

 has only deepened. I found in all these pages so 

 few and such slight allusions to the fact that the 

 whole land-tenure system of the civilized world is 

 under discussion, that if I had not otherwise known 

 it, I would not have understood any of these vague 

 hints about Bellamy and Henry George. As for 

 the enormous and constantly increasing list of 

 other persons who are attacking or defending the 

 present land-tenure system in articles, books, and 

 editorials, the class that at present considers "pri- 

 vate ownership in land " as one of the fixed and 

 unalterable facts of the universe, appears from its 

 own journals to have heard very little, and to care 

 much less. 



Now was there ever, since the world began, a 

 stranger or more interesting sociological fact than 

 this lack of knowledge of a movement which must 

 affect for good or evil whole classes of men, and 

 many generations ? Nationalism, and the single tax 

 idea, though so different in their aims, alike work 

 for changes which every land owner should under- 

 stand and either help forward or oppose to the end. 

 In the long run he must take sides, and all the new 

 movements hope for his ultimate support ; but why 

 is not the whole atmosphere of the publications 

 that go straight to the land-owner full of the grow- 

 ing, broadening spirit of the ethical, historical and 

 economic questions which are bound up in this dis- 

 cussion on " land ?" 



That discussion was in the universities long ago, 

 where men study the books of Maine, Seebohm, 

 Laveleye and the whole group of writers upon early 



