CHAPTER IV

Wealth for all the People

The existence of a few swollen fortunes can never make a wealthy nation. The owning of the sources of wealth by a few persons creates an industrial feudalism, with serfs and retainers, more vicious than the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Recognizing this as an established fact, many nations are now moving to limit greed and bring about a more just distribution of wealth.

The previous chapter has shown the methods employed-such as public ownership, municipal trading, co-operation, taxation of unimproved lands, exemption of improvements, excess condemnation, income and inheritance taxes, all of which make it more difficult to build up and pass on great estates to those who labored not to produce them.

In no land is the idea of private possession held more sacred than in America. This nation has become money-mad, and a new conscience, and new decalog have been evolved.

A new educational propoganda is demanded, placing the emphasis on commonwealth as over against private wealth; for under the influence of the desire of gain for personal ends, the larger idea of service for others is fast losing its power. In every money market of the land may be found thousands who are individualists in an age demanding social action. These men warring against all socialistic advance, are anarchists in their disregard for law, and in their contempt for government.

The massing of unlawful gains has caused a reaction-a peaceful social revolution which will yet check these lawbreakers, and bring about a more just distribution of wealth through a greater equality of opportunity. The ideal society is surely without extremes of poverty or riches, providing a competence for all, lifting all the people above want, taking away from them the fear of the poor-house, giving every man who is willing and able to work a chance for himself, and for securing a home and an education for his family. In it the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," is put into practice. What do you wish for yourself-a vocation, an avocation, a

home, education, friends, opportunity? Then according to this law these things which you wish for yourself you wish for every other man. This is the new ideal of social service-the seeking to secure health, wealth and happiness for all the people. Few realize to what extent this nation has gone in its effort to change conditions and bring about a more just and equitable distribution of its vast wealth.

This, then, is the story which we are to tell, the story of a nation at work in internal improvement, rather than in foreign conquest— in enriching the common people rather than in aiding a favored few.

The real wealth of a nation does not consist in its great congested cities with their trade and commerce, their industrial plants, their skyscrapers, their trusts and banks and corporations; for the wealth which is abiding, the wealth which gives true worth to a nation is found in the strong character, the vigorous manhood of its citizenship, in the proper education of its children, and in the happy homes in beautified cities which take the place of the hovel and the ghetto.

Fundamental to the conserving of this

higher wealth of a nation lies the proper use of its land and water; for if ever the urban population should exceed the rural, then will the physical, intellectual and moral forces be weakened, and the nation will be poorer because of it. This is the reason for the cry "back to the land"--voicing the desire to escape from the artificiality of the city to the simpler and more healthful life to be found near to nature-and from the warfare of the competitive struggle to the fraternal cooperation of the modern agricultural community. Not alone then does the higher wealth, but also that lower wealth which is expressed in dollars, lie in the development of a nation's land and water. The man who makes the soil productive is a real wealth maker of the nation; for our food supply is of far greater importance than all our luxuries. The man who utilizes the forces and materials of nature produces for the welfare of humanity in grain and fruit and vegetables more wealth than is drawn from all the gold mines in the world.

The proper use, and just distribution of the nation's vast domains may well receive the best thought of the times. The magnitude

of the undertaking of giving lands to the people can be better understood when we consider that this nation has had at its disposal about two billion acres of land outside of the original thirteen states, and the sovereign state of Texas, where all public lands belonged to the state to do with them as it judged best. And even after the lavish free grants and extensive sales during the past decades, there still remain half a billion unappropriated acres in the arid regions, awaiting the touch of the magic irrigation rivulet, and the wise plans of distribution at the hands of a paternal government, to furnish ideal homes for many millions of people. No other nation has ever made such liberal gifts of land, not alone to its native sons, but also to every alien who sought for citizenship.

It will be of interest at this point to note the methods by which this nation distributed its vast acreage. After filling certain grants to officers and men of the Revolutionary Army, and to officers and men of the other wars, our nation adopted the plan of offering all unappropriated lands at public sale, auctioning them off in large tracts, and those lands that