New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1909-08-18
LAND HUNGER
By r. j. Calhoun.

Calhoun.
acres seemed to be spread out to view
from every point of vantage and as
earth melted into sky in the hay dis
lance, one seemed to be as boundless
and inexhaustible as the other, with as
little danger of ever being crowded,
for day after day, through hundreds
of miles, it still reached out into the
seeming infinite.
Even in central Iowa, perfectly di-
versifed with woodland and prairie,
an old relative who was pioneer sett-
Ter, said that when he came there it
was commonly thought that the larger
prairies could never be settled, as they
could not then imagine it practical that
settlers could ever supply themselves
with the necessary fuel and building
material.
But even from the Atlantic to the
Pacific this boundless heritage has
been seized upon and covered with
paper titles and not an acre can be
used without paying the tribute. Just
what these titles rest upon is now of
little moment to the land-hungry mil
lions.
We read that in 1913, VIM. Murray,
thrifty Englishman, bought" of the
Illini Indians all the land reaching
from Lake Michigan and embracing
the present site of Chicago, west to the
Mississippi; and south to the mouth of
the Illinois and as far north as the site
of Waukegan for ''fve shillings, and
small amount of goods and merchan-
disc" The United States government,
formed soon afterwards, invalidated
this title, but would it have made any
difference to the presnt homeless gen.
craft on whether this title had stood,
or whether Murray had paid the In
dians ten times what it was then worth,
or whether be had taken it by force as
so much land has been taken? The
real crime was not in the price paid,
but-in placing the earth, the perpetual
heme of all generations, in the perpe-
tual ownership of some to the exclus-
ion of others.
The unfair bargains affected only
those making them, while the crime of
private title in land fastens itself upon
all succeeding generations and be-
comes the greatest factor of life and
the ruling force of the ages.
Even as many have been threatened
with prosecution for crying out against
crime, so on vaster scale the great
est Of all crimes is to speak word
against this crime which has left the
people land-hungry and homeless.
The Indian, like all primitive people,
had no idea of the private ownership
of land and did not realize what it
meant till after he was dispossessed.
Then he became for the first time a re al
fighting man, and went down fighting
to the last for the land he had lost.
The civilized working class have
been even less wise. Knowing the evils
of private ownership of the land;- see
ing it SO painfully apparent through
the centuries; they still have not had
sense enough to cry out against it,
much less to fight till the last drop OF
blood was shed rather than submit to
the injustice which the avarice or ig-
norance of former generations has fas-
tened upon them. But the pressure in.
creases: the ''iron heel" of ownership
grinds still lower the dispossessed.
"Slowly comes hungry people, like
lion creeping nigher.' Will they
again break out in a frenzy of destruc-
tive rage, or will they learn the lesson
of Socialism, that nothing can be &C.
complished by force, but all things car
be accomplished through education
even the restoration of the earth to the
human family for whom we have a
right to believe it was created?