The independent., 1903-05-07
THE NEBRASKA INDEPENDENT.

just as increasingly (and under much
worse conditions) as he has, lived on
poor, more scanty food, SO scanty that
many can only enter their complaint
from the "petters' field" who have
worn poorer, scantier clothes than he
or his have worn, none of whom can
refer to this or that little 165x30 foot
lot and shanty as their home. One
hundred and sixty acres of land,
house, barns, cattle, ETC., forsooth.
Why, such a home would give all of
these millions of homeless brothers
and sisters Of yours the nightmare!
They would think that Carnegie, or
Rockefeller, or Schwab, or, perhaps,
God had consented to let "Mr. Baer'
live there until he had kindly adj
justed the property interests and
other rights of the legion work peo-
pie.
Oh, yes, we grant all you say about
the hard work and priVations OF your
self and family all those years and
You have our sympathy, provided, we
can now enlist your own. But, did 1T
ever occur to you that had the single
tax been in vogue when you began
life, making land free and building
material plenty and cheap, clothing,
ETC., and all comforts of life Of easy
procurement, all the hardships of
which you complain would have been
avoided? Since you have manifested
SO much solicitude as to ask what dire
sequence may be visited upon your un-
protected offspring and wife in the
event of the adoption of an honest,
sensible system of taxation, let me
take courage to ask you if you wish
to hand down as a legacy to your
children the same vicious system of
land tenure and taxation that made |
you a Yeritable slave, but, in their |
case, because of increasing evil conse-
quences of land tenure, as of today, |
will be so intensified and more pre- |
judicial to them that it will be doubt |
full if they or either OF them will ever |
be sheltered by roof of their own.
Yes, suppose you should die, of !
course that would be bad for you. The
single tax or any other system of tax |
alton would not be responsible for anv |
freak your son may take in consider
because of land monopoly,
are as overcrowded as other lines and |
the single tax could not be held re-
sponsible more than other systems if |
your sons should abandon their
mother in her decline of life, turn his
or their backs upon the old home.
part his hair in the middle and az
ply for a school or clerkship and fail
ing these, take place in some
union" or get place as "scab."
After your daughters come from high
school or Rockefeller college to which
ESQ exceptionally you are now, after
SO many years of privat1on and toll,
able to send them, and failing as 50
many thousands do OF marrying fay-
orably, they must join the ever-in-
throng of service hunters. If
under the present regime you should
sell your farm and put it in a home
in Lincoln, you have no assurance that
the grass would be green upon your
grave before some business scheme
would induce mortgage upon the
city home and the disingeniousness of
business management, mishap or
trickery of some shrewd schemer re-
suit soon in the recently bereaved
family hunting a house to rent and
your children hunting employment
that so many are now unable to find.
The daughters might have the same
of the three young ladies
who sought employment as clerk
typewriter and bookkeeper in a near
by city in Nebraska recently, as told
me by travelling salesman who re-
sides at Lincoln and whose wife was
the witness of the "crying spell'
these girls had when they told of their
experience in applying for these vari-
GUS positions.
The places were "open," but tho
wages only $3.50 to $3.50 per week.
These young ladies protested that they
could not maintain themselves at that,
whereupon the proprietor or man
ager" suggested that if they would ac-
cept the situations they would be able
to soon find some gentleman friend?"
who would be glad to assist them. !
These things are only probable when
the legacy of free land or the natural
birthright of mankind is denied and
our farmer need do but little honest
reasoning to observe the truth of it.
AS to the change in rate of tax, if he