The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1877-03-03
MR.. MASON'S ADDRESS.

MIR. MASON'S ADDRESS.
NJ. President, Ladies 0,,d Gentlemen:
Agricultural cooperation abroad is at
least 4 900 years old. As mean to speak
for about forty minutes, this gives me an
average of a minute to each century. You
will pardon, therefore, a certain sketchiness
q outline, and an occasional Jump over
few hundred years Like that Of most
speakers, my story begins in the vicinity
of Adam, but its scene will be swiftly
shifted from the Garden of Eden to the
garden farms Of England
infant man knew no individual rights in
land. Why should he The number Of
Individuals was strictly limited, while the
number Of quarter-section farms was
practically illimitable. man could have
new one every year, without the formal
ity of giving a purchase money mortgage
for II either. And when the possessor was
dispossessed, il was not by foreclosing a
mortgage it was not by forging a set Of
deeds it was not by voting his acres TO a
corporation. Nobody knocked his title on
the head. Somebody knocked him on the
head, buried him, seized his cattle, and
turned them loose To Craze on the rich
grasses that grew over the new made grass
This was not cooperation it WAS
chaos.
As soon as society began to become or
ganized, we ind the cooperative farm
The patrlarchal system was based upon this.
albeit the patriarchs confined themselves
mainly to stock farms, and did not bother
their gray boards about sub soil ploughing,
rotation Of crops. and cheap freights to
the seabosrd. The community of that
day consisted of great, great grandfather,
with his abundant offspring around him.
The offspring all married early and often,
and had many wives and more children
This community settled in some inviting
region, got title by getting possession, kept
1t by killing anybody who interfered, and
held the land and its produce in common
As social organization progressed, the
property-rig ghts of the community became
more strictly defined and fully recognized
Those Of the individual were still in abey-
ance. At least the individual assessed
himself, and made a compromise.
The land owned by the community was
divided into three parts, which may be
roughly described as town lots, meadows
and ploughed fields. The cattle Of the
community grazsd on the meadows. The
men, women and children worked in the
fields. The resulting beef and bread, or
mutton and maize belonged TO everybody.
But each family had town lot to itself.
Every year the families changed around.
A took BIS lot and b C's, and 80 on. In
divIdual rights were recognized only for a
year. So there was no permanent tenure,
but yet quasi recognition Of individual
ownership.
This three-fold division of the commu-
nifty lands has lett its Impress on Hindos.
tan and all Europe. II survived. in parts
of India in almost entire vIgOr until the
English seized the peninsula, and il still
fingers there. The villages of Russia pre-.
serve it. The peasants own their Land Id
common, and la Inany cases the produce il
common. Even in England, where the
landowners form close corporation almost
without parallel, there are still traces oil
the old commercial and cooperative sys
TEN. Thousands of acres in our mother
land still belong, albeit shaky tenure, tC
the inhabitants of the neghboring villages
who cut their firewood, pasture their cat
tie, and turn loose their children on this
their joint possession. These commons
are lingering relic of the time when tn,
people of England owned the land o
England, and owned it together. Tn,
many have since been dispossessed by tn,
few. A long course of legal fraud ha
vested the acres OF Eagland in small an,
high-born class.
So, through ages, the individual hs