nity to the slave owners. In the long run, this was cheaper than the American way, for the freedom of these five million chattel slaves, valued at one billion dollars in 1861, has cost the American people by this time about ten billion dollars in money, hundreds of thousands of valuable young lives, seas of blood and rivers of tears. After all, the price was too big to pay.
Up to 1789, the soil of France belonged to the clergy and the nobility. About that time the French people raised a disturbance. During the excitement, some of the nobles and clericals lost their heads and ran off to Germany; still others lost their heads by remaining at home, and their land was inherited by the French peasantry. It looks like a cheap way of acquiring land, and yet the French revolution, followed by the Napoleonic war, cost more money, lives and blood, than the soil of France is worth even today. A similar condition to that in France, in regard to land ownership, existed in Prussia until 1815. In that year the Stein laws were enacted, which allowed the serfs to purchase land of their former masters on the installment plan. It required many years to do this, but in the end, it was a cheaper way than the one taken by the people of France. We Socialists who understand history, are not pledged to confiscation, and for the sake of expediency, we are perfectly willing to pay the trust owners for their property in their own coin.
Acquiring Standard Oil.
The question now arises, how will the Socialists do this? Let us take for illustration the Standard Oil Company. This concern, a perfect monopoly, is capitalized at $100,000,000. It makes a yearly profit of about $50,000,000. Now
12
