It will be the re-discovering of America.
Never did kind and beneficent laws show what men, with the right kind of
stuff in them, could do, as did our land laws. Men who now own territory
as large as some of the Eastern States started in without a dollar.
They had something better. They had consciences that was good for any
tests that the scoundrels could put them to. Never did gangs of
"floaters" help the political boss and ward-heeler rob the public
treasury with greater success than did this other brand of the bastard
citizen help his boss to hog the public domain.
In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land that would give one
hundred and sixty acre homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand
people) is owned by one hundred individuals, all average of sixteen
thousand acres to each owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and
leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thousand acres.
In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer in search of work can walk
for days in one direction alongside of fencing that incloses land
belonging to one firm. And this immense fortune-in land was obtained by
robbery, just as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained.
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