The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-11-06

area of acres in the next twenty years as
they have done in the last quarter of a
century, fifty thousand men will own
the entire landed domain of the nation.
This is to what we as people are tend
ing to-day. Now, how shall it be avoid
ed 1t is true that many of the evils
that worked i'll to the human family
under the old system that has descended
to us from Great Britain have been
greatly modified. The herring of the
estate by the eldest son has become OBJ
solete with us. But this is being rapidly
more than counteracted by our desire to
encourage in great corporations the
buying up of vast landed tracts-the
driving back of the settlers from the
great, governmental domain, which is
so cheap and plentiful, that the man
who can compass so many thousand dol
lars can avail himself of opportunity to
get possession of so many thousand
acres. Often in my travelling to and fro,
and up and down in this country I pass
places where some man and woman
with large family of children have
been driven up into the mountain fast
nesses, where, working at all sorts of
disadvantageous odds, they are COM
PEELED to dig and delve and keep their
children away from the opportunities of
education and the intercourse of society,
which all humanity needs so badly, and
must have if it would progress. 1 see
these people building their humble
homes in isolated places, while just be-
low, in the verdant, smiling valley are
thousands of acres given over to horses
and sheep and cattle and swine, and no
man dares to dispute their prior right.
Friends, have you never questioned
whether or not it would not be better
that this Government of ours should in-
deed be of the people and by the people,
rather than government for the few
who may compass these broad acres for
the abode of hogs and cattle, driving
back humanity to the foothills? 1
know that my views upon this question
are considered by many to be altogether
Utopian; but tell you, friends, L can
see as plainly as in midday can see
the sun, that the time must come when
! this Republic shall acquiesce in the idea
that this government shall be literally
and truly government of homes; when
no man shall be permitted to spread his
imaginary ownership over countless
acres of our governmental area, while
man shall be driven by mans cupidity
! out in the byways, among the hedges,
in the bitches, among the rocks and
powders, or where the eagle keeps
watch over the pointed crag, or scars in
his freedom over the wild Businesses.
1 see that the time must come when
these things must have an end and
, when every man shall be able to say
1.-THE Earth is my mother; from her 1
draw my sustenance; no one has right
to drive me from her BOSOM" "Oh!
but" says some man who, through
over-reaching, or by inheritance, has ac-
cumulated a vast domain-owning a
whole township, or it may be in some
instances, q whole cOunty-"What nom
sense that woman is preachingw Now,
let me say to you, good strand 1 say it
that you may ponder it well-that often,
in the stilly night, when you might have
imagined that if 1 was thinking at all, I
was going wild on that particular hobby
that you are pleased to call "Woman's
Rights" have been studying this deep
financial problem. And l read it thus
by the signs of the times: Fifty years
hence individual ownership in these
large tracts of land will be just as obso-
lete as individual ownership in man is to-
: day. "Oh! but" you tell US, "tkat will
never do. You take away the idea that
land is the basis of all our financial
greatness, and straightway you sunder
the bonds that bind society together. If
you break up the bonds of self-interest
you make of the people a nomadic, wan
dering race, so that they will lose their
hold upon all that is permanent, and re-
lapse into the mode of life of the wild
Indian" 1 have often heard these
, arguments advanced. But let me tell
you, friends, that you who reason thus
have not yet acquired the divide idea Of
a government of the people and by the
/ people. But you say to me, Come
that is running into Communism; we
never can endure that" Ah, friends,
t there is nothing in Communism as 1t is,
| that compares with this idea. COM
q munism was born of the ignorant Preju-
dice of an idle rabble, who, seeing that
: something was wrong, have only dimly
comprehended what, and they have
/, flown TO the other extreme, and instead
of striving after humanity's best inter
ests. have been ready with torch and
flame to lay the wide world waste. We
want the government Of these United
/, States to be so emphatically of the peo-
pie and by the people that it can own It's
I governmental right, our vast landed do
! main and hold it in trust for the pos
SCISSORS. How this is to be brought
, about-whether our government, grown
rich and proud and mighty, shall be en-
) abled to purchase from those men who
, own, under the old feudaI system, broad
| tracts of land which they can never use,
E whether the government shall purchase
these tracts at fair valuation, or
/ whether we shall go on, until the vast
: homeless, landless masses shall rise up
in a great rebellion, compared Win
4 which the shareholders Rebellion was was
n as ehild's play, is something WHICH ~