Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1891-05-14

chinery would pillow more, SOW more,
reap more and consume less than
all the men who had preceded it.
From 1850 to 1880 labor-saying ma
chinery used in agriculture increas-
ed nine hundred per cent, while
farm labor increased only three
hundred and fifty per cent. in the
operation of improved land, which
increased one hundred and fifty per
cent.
Then capital combined to operate
the big farm and the small farmer
went to trucking or died out. He
could no longer 90 into the pasture
and survey his herds and flocks, or
into the field and look upon his
waving crops ripening to the har-
vest ; he could no longer sit in the
open door, when the shadows fell
down over the earth, and look over
the expanse of his acres, or plant
his feet on the soil and spread out
hands to the heavens, laden with
the dew and shining with the spark
ling stars, and say "Here is my
home and here the home of my
children this is our freehold, and
within the circle of the earth | owe
no man aught but charity - for a
skeleton had stalked out of the
graveyard of civilization and had
entered this mans abode debt
chung like foul vapOr about him ;
independence was thing of the
past, and the JOY of life had turned
to ashes in his grasp.
From 1870 to 1880 farms of one
hundred acres and under decreased
eleven per cent. and farms of over
one hundred acres increased one
hundred per cent, while farms of
one thousand acres and over in
creased four hundred per cent.
This growth of the large farms
brought with it CORRESPONDING in
debtedness among the small farm
ers of the country. Nine million
mortgages are to-day on record in
the United States, bearing from five
to forty per cent. interest, and, by
the experimental inquiry conducted
by the United States Census Bureau
for 1890, it is ascertained that only
three per cent. of this Indebtedness
was incurred by the citizens of Mas
sachusetts prior to 1870, only four
per cent. by the citizens of Illinois
prior to 1880, and only five per
cent. by the cizens of Iowa prior to
1880 or in other words, a compar-
atively small per centum of the ex-
listing recorded Indebtedness was
due ten years ago.
For the first time in the history of
men, We have lived to see ''bonanza"
farms and "cattlc kings - to read
of associations which own eight
hundred thousand cattle that Craze
on fifteen million acres of land of
single corporations whose live stock
on their great ranch number a mil
lion cattle, a million sheep and three
hundred and fifty thousand horses,
of an estimated value of forty-five
million dollars to see men operat-
farms covering twenty-five to one
hundred and fifty thousand acres
under fence to see the rolling stock
of the railroads choked with the
yield of the cereal crop, and the
navies of the world floating idly
at our wharyes to secure to the spec
ulator rise in the price of wheat !;
We have seen the settler on the from
tier toiling to raise crop during
the summer months which necessity
forced him to burn for fuel in the
winter We have become accustomed
to "corners" which levy tax on
sixty million people as a result of
of the speculations of gamblers in
the food supply of the United
States in word, we have seen the
husbandman, year by year, bound
more hopelessly to the coat-tails of
his lord proprietor in this new feu-
dalism of the nineteenth century.
My friends, let us apply this ex-
perience to the subject matter of
this discussion tonight. Suppose
for the sake of argument, and that
alone, We say that the plan to lease
out the oyster lands in small hold
ings would insure their better work
ing, have We any assurance that in
time, either by mortgage or pur-
chase, the small holders will not,
like the small farmers, be absorbed
by the larger capitalist ? Have We