THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

Inangahua Times, Volume IX, Issue 1454, 8 October 1884, Page 2

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

[By Henry George.] ♦ Twelve months ago when the hedges were blooming I passed along a lovely English road near by the cottngeof that " Shepherd of Salisbury Plan" of whom I read, when a boy, in a tract which is a sample of the husks frequently given to children as religious food, and which is still, I persume, distributed by the American, as it is by the English, Tract Society. On one side of the road was a wide expanse of rich land, in which no ploughshare had that season been struck, because the owner demanded a higher rout than the formers would give. On the other. st-e'ehed, for many aIroad acre, a lordly park, its velvety

Terdnre untrodden save by a few lightfooted deer. And, as we passed along a tny companion, a native or tln-se parts, bitterly complained ttjnt, since tb ; s lord of the monor had enclosed l.he little villas green and set out h;s fences to take in the trass of the roadside, the cottagers could not keep pvon a goose, and the children of the vilhirje had no place to play 1 Plane there was in plenty, but, so far as the chi! were concerned, it might as well he in Africa or in rhe moon. And so i.i our Far West, I have seen immigrants toiling painfully for long distances through vacant laud without v finding a spot on which they dare settle. In a country where the springs a>'d streams are all inclosed by walls he •cannot scale., the warfaver, hut for ■charity, might perish of thirst, as in a desert. There is plenty Of vacant land on Manhattan Island. But on Manhattan Island human beings arp packed closer than anywhere else in the. world. There is ple.itv of fresh | air all round — one man owns fo'-ty acres of it, a whiff of which he never treafchs, since, his home is on hisyatcht j in Envopean waters; bnt, for a'l thai;, • thousands of children die in New York fvery summer for want of it and thousands more would die did, not charitable people subscribe to fresh-air funds. The social pressure which forces on our shores this swelling tide or immigration airses not -from the fact that the land of Europe is all in use, hnt that it is all appropriated. That will soon be our case as well. Our land will not all he used ; bnt it will all be " few.d in." We still talk of our vast public domain, and figures showing millions and millions of acres of Unappropriated public laud yet swvll gradual^ in tliß reports of our Land Office. Bnt already it is so difficult to find pnbliland fit for settlement, that the great majority of those wishing to settle find it cheaper to buy, and rents in California and the New Northwest rnn from. 41 quarter to one-half the crop. It must be remembered that the area which yet figures in the returns ni ■our public domain includes all the great mountain chains, all the vasts •deserts and dry plains fit only for grazing, or not even for that ; it must be remembered that of what is really fertile millions and millions of acres are covered by railway grants «s ye I unpatented, or what amounts to Lhe same thing to the settler, a' # c shadowed by them ; that much is held by aop'-o-priation of the water, without which it is useless; and that much more is held nnder claims of various kinds, "which whether legal or illegal, are sufficient to keep the settler off unless he will consent to pay a price, or 10 mortgage his labour for years. NeverLhless, land wich us is still comparatively cheap. Bnt this can not long continue. The stream of irunrigration that comes swelling in, added to our steadi'v au^iiiKO-i'ig natural increase, will soon no«r *„ •occupy the available Kinds as to raise the price of the poorest lanri worth settling on to a pome we ha-v; never known. Nearly twenty years ago Mr Wade of Ohio, in a speech in the United State Senate, predicted that by the close of the century eve'V acre of good agricultural land in the Union would be worth at least oOdo'. That his prediction will be even more than verified we may already see. By the close of the century our population, at the normal rate of increase, -will be over forty millions more than in 1880. That is to say, within the next 27 years an additional population greater than that of the wholo United States at the close of the civil war "■••II tie demanding room. Where w.'l they find cheap land? There is *ione ■farther West. Our advance has reached the Pacific, and beyond the Pacific is the East, with its teeming millions. From San Diego to Pnget Sound there is no valley of the coastline that is not settled or pre-empted. To the very farthest corners of the Republic settlers are already going. The pressure is already so great that speculation antt settlement are heginning to cross the northern border into Canada and the southern border into Mexico ; so great that land is being settled and is becoming valuable that a few years ago would have heeu rejected — land where winter lasts for six months and the theremomefcer goes down into the forties below ze»o; land where owing to insufficient rainfall, a crop is always a risk ; land that cannot be cultivated at all without irrigation. The vast spaces of the western half of the continent do not contain anything like the proportion of arable laud that does the eastern. The "great American desert" yet exists, though not now marked upon ■our maps. There is not to-day remaining in the United States any considerable body of good land unsettled and unclaimed, upon which settlers can go with the prospect of ' finding a homestead on Government terms. Already the tide of settlement presses angrily upon the Indian reservations, and but for the power of the .general government would sweep over them. Already, although her population is as yet but a fraction more than six to the square mile, the last acre of the vast public domain of Texas has passed into private hands, the rush to purchase during the past year having been such that many thousands of acres more than the State had, were sold. We may see that what is coming by the avidity with which capitalists, and foreign capitalists, who realize what is the value cf land where none is left over which population may freely spread, are purchasing land in the United States. This movement has been going on quietly ■for some years, until now it seems as if there is scarcely a rich English peer or wealthy English banker who

does rot, either individually or as the member of some company, own a great tnict ofonr now land, and the pu-chase of large tracts fox 1 foreign account is •joiner on every day It is with these absentee landlords that our coming ( millions must make terms. Nor must it be forgotten that, while our population is increasing, and our i 4 wild lands" are being appropriated, ilie productive capacity of our soils is being stead ly induced, which practically amounts to the same things as reducing its quantity. Bpeakiog generally, the agriculture of ihe !_.'.; ited Sl.at.es is aa exhaustive ag.vj-i'-iure. We do not return to the earth what we take from it ; each crop that is harvested leaves the soil tho poorer. We arecnttiugdown forests v.liicli we do not replant; we are shipping ab/orul, in wheat and cotton and tokieuo and meat, or flushing into the sn;t through the sewers of our great cities, the e'enients of fertility Unit have been embrfdded in the soil by the slow pro» g-p^s ofnntiT'O, acting rVir long !\-j;es. The day is near at baud when it wi'l be no longer possi "I.- for our increasing population to freely exp.-md over new •and ; wlie.ii we shall need for our own millions the immense surplus o" food-stuffs no.v exp'irted; when we shall not only begin to fe.<?l tliafc social pressure which conies when natuvai resources are all monopolized but when increasing social pressure here wiii increase social pressure in Europe. How momentous is this fact we begin to realise when we cast about from such another outlet as the United States has furnished. We look in vain. The British possessions to the north of us embrace comparatively little arable land ; the valleys of the Saskatchewan and the Red River are being already taken up, and land speculation is already raging there in fever. Mexico offers opportunities for American enterprise and American capital and American trade, but scarcely for American emigration. There is some room for our settlers in that northern zone that has been kept desolate by tierce Indians; but it is very little. The table-land of Mexico and those portions of Central and South America suited to our people are already well tilled by a population whom we connot displaceunless, as the Saxons displaced the ancient Britons, by a war of extermination. Anglo-Saxon, capital and enterprise and influence will doubtless dominate those regions, and many oi: our people will go there ; but it will be as Englishmen to go to India or Bi iush Guinea. Where laud is already granted and where peon labour can be had for a song, no such emig/auion can tfike place as that which has been pushing its way westward over the United States. So of Africa,. Oar '•ace has made a permanent lodgment on iihe southern extremity of that vast continent, but its northern advance is met by tropical heats and the presence of races fi f strong vitality On the north the Latin branches of the European family seem to have again become acclimated, and will probably in time revive the ancient populousness and importance of Mediterranean Africa ; but it will scarcely furnish an outlet for more than them. As for Equatorial Africa, though we may explore and civilize and develop, we cannot colouize it in the face of the climate and of races that increase rather than disappear in presence oc the white man. The arable, land of Australia would not merely be sooi. well populated by anything like the emigration that Europe is pouring on i America, but there the forestalling nf | land goes on as rapidly as here. Thus we. come again to that greatest of the continents, from which our race once | started on its westward way, Asia — mother of peoples and religious — which yet contains the gra-iber part of the human race — millions who live and die in all but utter unconsciousness of our moden world. In the awakening of those people by the impact of Western civilization lies one of the greatest problems of the future. But it is not my purpose to enter into such speculations. What I want to point out is that we are very soon to lose one of the most important conditions under which our civilization has been developing — that possibility of expansion over virgin soil that has given scope and freedom to American life, and relieved social pressure in the most progressive European nations. Tendencies, harmless under this con dition may become dangerous when it is changed. Gunpowder does not explode until it is confined. You may rest your hand on tke slowly ascending jaw of a hydradlic press. It will only gently raise it. But wait a moment till it meets resistance ?