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from Presidents and Supreme Court Judges down to State Governors and Assemblymen.
It seems that the sole purpose of all land legislation during the last three quarters of a century was to encourage landlordism and land speculation and to rob. the farming population for the benefit of gigantic corporations. Uncle Sam squandered natural resources like a drunken sailor; or, better, he robbed his nephews and nieces like an unscrupulous guardian to enrich a few of his pets.
All through the northwest we find the railroad corporations selling the land, which Uncle Sam was kind enough to give them for nothing, to subsidiary lumber companies, and with the proceeds thereof built the roads.
These lumber companies barely paid more than a few dollars per acre for the finest timber land in the world, but the price more than paid for the building of the roads. In due time the majestic forest was converted into lumber. The cut and burned-over land, with nothing left on it but the blackened stumps, was sold to settlers for from ten to fifteen dollars per acre. In this ingenious way the farmer was made to pay for the building of roads which were to rob him ever after. Incidentally he also helped the struggling lumber trust to bear the heavy expense entailed in the devastation of our forests.
Even when the government gave the land direct to the settlers under the homestead acts it was more from a desire to furnish freight and passenger traffic for the subsidized roads than to help the farmer to land.
To-day our public domain is a thing of the past, and what little land there is still open for homesteading is too poor to raise a fuss on with two Irishmen and a gallon of whisky.
Where other enlightened people have steadily striven towards the abolition of land monopoly, our own government made it easy to monopolize the soil. There is absolutely no limit as to how much of God's earth an individual may hog in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Even foreign landlords have been encouraged to take as much of the pie as desired.
Here, for instance, are a few English beneficiaries of Uncle Sam's generosity:
| Earl of Cleveland | 106,650 acres |
| Duke of Devonshire | 148,625 acres |
| Duke of Northumberland | 191,460 acres |
| Byron H. Evans | 700,000 acres |
| Duke of Sutherland | 422,000 acres |
| Robert Tenant | 530,000 acres |
