Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-03-30
OWN HOMES.
Ancient IsraePs Suggestion to the PeO-
pie Of Massachusetts.
The Aim in the olden Time was for Each Man
to Become HousehOIder-How to Re-
lieve the Labor Market.

Working people in Massachusetts, to-
day have the comforts and the minor
Injuries once monopolized by the rich.
Still there are strikes and discomfort.
The social adjustment here, therefore.
must be found, not in any great increase
in the material possessions of the average
man, but IN juster ideas of what consti-
tutes life. So long as the ideals sug-
gested by our high-wrought material
civilization remain in full force, so long
will there be discomfort on the part of
wage-earners. The only way in which
families with incomes of $500 (the aver
age TO the industrial families OF Massa-
chusetts) can be so far peers of those
with incomes of $4,000 as to make them
contented, must be through a general
recognition that the family with the
smaller income is attaining the ends Of
life as successfully and completely as the
family with the greater income.
The establishment of such public SEN
timent must be largely the work of the
wsalthier people. Happily there are, in
our older communities, thousands OF
sff1uent families who would gladly help
in such work. These people conform
to the modern luxurious standards of
living, because they see no way under
present social conditions to abandon
them; but they would gladly have life
put upon simpler basis.
A suggestion for, them, then, is found
in the social economy of the ancient
Hebrews. That people were pre-
eminently q race of independent house
hn iHcol TsraaI RI no
not a man of wealth, but householder;
one who, though of moderate resources,
was dependent directly ana only upon
God and his own exertions. Legislation
was shaped with view to
producing such householders, par
ticularly the land laws. Though
perhaps never perfectly realized, the di-
viuelv established ideal was to give to
every family an inalienable landed es-
tate, where its members could sit under
their own vine and fig tree. Whether
the law for this was given by Moses, or
later by priestly legislators, is disputed:
but II was so far carried into effect that
the life of the people was closely at
tached to the soil, and every family thus
maintaining its inheritance was put in
the way of obtaining the necessities of
life aud was KEEP the peer of every other
family in the land.
Imagine now an ancient 1sraelite ad-
dressing these old families of Massaohu-
sets, who would fain find some life
worthier Of their Puritan stock. "Go
back - he might say, ''to your ances-
tFai farms; not to find riches there, but
to make on them your homes, and to
live there that nobIer life. There set
such examples of plain living and high
thinking as will be worth more to the
working families of the state than to
double their incomes. Then urge the
commonwealth to make possible similar
homes for all its families - This would
be practicable; for there is agricultural
land enough IN Massachusetts to afford
to each of our 400 900 families nine
acres. The interest on the cost TO the
state of resuming and reapporrioning
these lands, as indicated, would entail
tax of but about 81 on the thousands of
our present assessed valuation. Suppose,
then, every family in the state should
have placed at its disposal such an acre
age upon which to rear a house and
obtain q livelihood.
Such a proportion of our townspeople
earn an income greater than that of the
average farmer that, with their present
tOcdIS Low AOuSOHOA0OI5 t10O
their aine acres if they must live upon
them. Suppose, however, that this sug-
gested movement toward the soil by the
wealthy and educated classes had taken
place; that scattered all over the farm
ing regions of the state were these best
fainliIes, with their cultivated homes,
giving to country life the prestige which
it has now lost. There are families
enough of independent incomes; or who,
having means TO make improvements,
would be content with somewhat smaller
incomes than they now enjoy, for the
sake Of the added independence and dig
nifty of life on their own estates, to double
the present agricultural population. It
is safe to say that with the added moral
fiber, as we'll as labor, thus put upon it
the soil would at once double its produc-
ton. AS improvements should go on,
smaller holdings would become practical
BILE, and the time would not be distant
when any family reduced to poverty
could take refuge on its own estate and
get a hum BILE livelihood with as much
self-respect as the judge or governor who
might live on the lands adjoining.
BY such an easy outflow upon the soil
the periodical congestion of the labor
market would be relieved. Those who
should choose to remain in the towns,
besides receiving their modest rental,
could always earn competence; they
would have comfortable feeling, too,
that there was possible dependence be-
hind them III case OF disaster. Finally,
with many thousands Of the best people
in the state living modestly on such
estates as they could themselves COM
mand, they would be content to find life
in living. GEORGE A. JACKSON,
Swampscott, Mass.