Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-08-20
SINGLE TAX DEPARTMENT.
CIVILIZATION THREATENED.

see and confess the need of some radio
al cure for the evils that affect not only
this country, but the whole civilized
world. There is found in all countries
no matter what their tariff policy, a
tendency that threatens the extinction
of civilization. It exists in this coun-
try and it will be notably demonstrated
in the next census, by the figures show
ing the growth of city populations and
the relative shrinkage of rural popula-
tons. Commenting on this the Journal
says:
when men flock to cities, and when
farms are abandoned, or concentrated
in the hands of few, there arises a
situation which indicates that that
which has forever been the curse of the
race, and which has always foreshad-
owed the downfall of that nation in
which such event transpires, the abase-
ment of the masses. This is true of all
the nations of history, from the Chal-
deans and Assyrians down to mighty
Rome, for no people thrives permanent
~ whose existence is drawn from the
soil by alien hands. The agricultural
portion of such community speedily be-
comes separated both in habit and
thought from those residing in cities,
and the latter produce race of ener-
waited and weakened people, who easily
fall victims to their own vices superin-
duced by absence from that great pro-
moter of national, as of individual
strength, the soil.
This is true, but not the whole truth.
The degradation of the rural commun-
ity incident to this process accelerates
that tendency which originally made
heather and pagan terms of reproach
and caused all that is desirable in the
life of the race to be called civilization.
1t is we'll that men should live close
enough together for mpanionship,
and overcrowding and isolation are
alike to be deplored That we are I'M
dergoing the process that destroyed
Israel and wrecked the civilization of
Rome is apparent to every man who
does not willfully close his eyes to
what is going on around him. No
country born man of forty or more
needs any statistics to show him how
the condition, financially and socially,
of the farmers of the eastern and mid
die states has changed for the worse
since the days of his boyhood. No one
HdNlllS CNth tl1C illoi>l 81 pei uSAdi hbo"i
edge of the life of the idle rich, and
their hangers-on, can doubt that the
standard of morals among them has
fallen very low and is steadily falling.
That the same is true among the very
poor is matter of police court record.
Our Toledo contemporary not only sees
the tendency but it sees the cause. 1t
says:
'Under our system of laws, which
permits unlimited private ownership OF
the soil, there has arisen wrong
which we are all willing to condemn
alien ownership of great tracts by for
eigners who have neither part nor lot
with us nor with our growth, and who
simply hold the soil from those who
would otherwise find there homes for
themselves and families. But with our
criticism of this alien ownership, con-
fessedly wrong and unfair and uni ust
to those who come here to make per-
manent homes, perhaps we will need
to go deeper in this matter and dis
cover how wisely we follow the Roman
rather than the Celtic or Saxon plan of
land-hOlding, and whether we are best
situated by vesting in some fortunate
person or his descendants that which is
as much a matter of public right as the
air, the water or sunlight God, or ma
ture, as is preferred provided the
earth, equally with the air and golden
sunlight, and the boundless ocean, and
it is not unwisdom which opposes the
holding of land under perpetual ten
ure by those so fortunate as to acquire
it. 1t was not the owners of the Calu-
met and Hecla mines who planted the
copper deep in the bosom of the earth
at that point. They toiled not, neither
did they spin, nor put forth at atom of
intelligence, or effort to provide that
which is rightfully common inherit
ance to all. 1t was not man, but ma
ture, that buried the coal and iron I'M
derneath the Appalachian mountains,
although it is now man who sits in his
Wall street office and DEGREES how
much coal shall be mined in given
time, in order that certain price shall
be maintained Man had neither lot
nor part in planting minerals; the gas,
the oil, the marble, nor the precious
metals in the earth, any more than he
has provided the water that falls in
blessed dew at night, or in cool and
refreshing showers to soak the parched
earth by day, or the genial sun
shine which makes life and hap
piness. And yet man has so arranged
that while all must have access to air
and. sunshine and water, a few are al
lotted the rich blessings bestowed for
the race in the bosom of the earth, and
nothing infallibly remains for the
masses but a bare six feet of sell, in
which they are permitted to lay their
weary bones after obeying the beck
and call of the fortunate few in all the
long and dismal years during which
they have endured want and penury."
Under such circumstances it is not
wonderful that hopelessness of ade-
quate reward drives the poor as well as
the thrifty and ambitious from the
country to the easier life of the town,
where the chances seem greater, or
that the hopeless poverty of crowded
multitudes drags thousands down to
crime and shame. Yet men laugh at
the suggestion that civilization can be
endangered, and in the face of the most
serious of problems manifest the reck-
lessness of the Mississippi steamboat
captain who seated little darkey on
the safety valve during a race. Let
anyone who sneers at the suggestion of
danger to modern civilization read in
Progress and Poverty" that marvellous
chapter ''How Modern Civilization
May Decline. standard.