Part 6

We shall need to do the same in all the subjects that lie at the foundations,--in all the other crafts; all these crafts are of the earth. They support the physical man and the social fabric, and make the conditions out of which all the highest achievements may come.

Every person in a democracy has a right to be educated by these means; and a people living in a democracy must of necessity understand the significance of such education. This education should result or function politically. It is not sufficient to train technically in the trades and crafts and arts to the end of securing greater economic efficiency,--this may be accomplished in a despotism and result in no self-action on the part of the people. Every democracy must reach far beyond what is commonly known as economic efficiency, and do everything it can to enable those in the backgrounds to maintain their standing and their pride and to partake in the making of political affairs.

The neighbor's access to the earth

When one really feels the response to the native earth, one feels also the obligation and the impulse to share it with the neighbor.

The earth is not selfish. It is open and free to all. It invites everywhere. The naturist is not selfish,--he shares all his joys and discoveries, even to the extent of publishing them. The farmer is not selfish with his occupation,--he freely aids every one or any one to engage in his occupation, even if that one becomes his competitor. But occupations that are some degrees removed from the earth may display selfishness; trade and, to a large extent, manufacture are selfish, and they lock themselves in. Even the exploiting of the resources of the earth may be selfish, in the taking of the timber and the coal, the water-powers and the minerals, for all this is likely to develop to a species of plunder. The naturist desires to protect the plants and the animals and the situations for those less fortunate and for those who come after. There are lumbermen and miners with the finest sense of obligation. There are other men who would take the last nugget and destroy the last bole.

We are to recognize the essential integrity of the farming occupation, when developed constructively, as contrasted with the vast system of improbity and dishonor that arises from depredation and from the taking of booty.

The best kind of community interest attaches to the proper use and partitioning of the earth, a communism that is dissociated from propaganda and programs. The freedom of the earth is not the freedom of license: there is always the thought of the others that are dependent on it. It is the freedom of utilization for needs and natural desires, without regard to one's place among one's fellows, or even to one's condition of degradation or state of sinfulness. All men are the same when they come back to the meadows, to the hills, and to the deep woods: He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

The lesson of the growing abounding earth is of liberality for all, and never exploitation or very exclusive opportunities for the few. Even if the weaker anywhere perish in the contest for food, they are nevertheless given the opportunity to contest on terms equal to their abilities; and at all events, we come, in the human sphere, to the domination of sweet reason rather than to competition in sheer force. When, by means of reasonable education, this simple relation is understood by mankind and begins to express itself spontaneously, we shall find our voluminous complex of laws to regulate selfishness gradually disappearing and passing into the limbo.

It is now easy to understand the sinfulness of vast private estates that shut up expanses of the surface of the earth from the reach and enjoyment of others that are born similarly to the privileges of the planet. There is no warrant in nature for guarantee deeds to such estates. It is true, of course, that land-estates should not be equal, for capacities for use are not equal, and abilities and deserts are not equal. It is legitimate to reward those who otherwise render great service, and this reward may lie in unusual privileges. The present emoluments in the way of incomes bear little relation to service or even to merit.

We have not yet escaped the idea that vested rights--and particularly personal realty--are inviolable. Certainly these rights must be protected by law, otherwise there can be no stability and regularity in affairs; but there is no inalienable right in the ownership of the surface of the earth. Readjustments must come, and even now they are coming slowly, and here and there in the interest of the neighbor; and in the end there will be no private monopoly of public or natural resources.

The cure for these ills does not lie, however, in the ownership of all the land by "the government," at least not in our time and perhaps never. It is well for a person to have his own plot for his lifetime, with the right to use it as he will so long as he does not offend, or does not despoil it for those who follow: it steadies him, and it identifies him with a definite program in life.

We usually speak as if all good results in the distribution of the natural bounty will ensue if "the government" or "the state" owns the resources; but government ownership of resources and direction of industries may not mean freedom or escape for the people. It depends entirely on the kind of government,--not on its name or description, but on the extent to which the people have been trained to partake on their own initiative. The government may be an autocracy or only another form of monopoly.

The aristocracy of land has much to its credit. Great gains in human accomplishment have come out of it; but this does not justify it for the future. The aristocracy of land is a very dangerous power in human affairs. It is all the more dangerous when associated with aristocracy of birth and of factitious social position, which usually accompany it. A people may be ever so free in its advantages and in its theoretical political organization, and yet suffer overwhelming bondage if its land is tied up in an aristocratic system, and particularly if that system is connected into a social aristocracy. And whenever rigid aristocracy in land connects itself with the close control of politics, the subjection becomes final and complete.

What lies within a nation or a people may lie in enlarged form between the nations or the peoples. Neighborliness is international. Contest for land and sea is at the basis of wars. Recognizing the right of any people to its own life, we must equally recognize its right to a sufficient part of the surface of the earth. We must learn how to subdivide it on the basis of neighborliness, friendship, and conference; if we cannot learn this, then we cannot be neighbors but only enemies. The proposal now before Congress to cede to Canada the Alaskan Panhandle, or a part of it, is an evidence of this growth of international morals, extended to the very basis on which nations have been the least ready to co-operate.

If we may fraternalize territory, so shall we fraternalize commerce. No people may rightly be denied the privilege to trade with all other peoples. All kinds of useful interchange are civilizers and peacemakers; and if we carry ourselves to others when we carry our produce and our wares, so do any of us need that others shall bring their produce and their wares to us. It would be a sorry people that purchased no supplies from without. Every people, small or large, has right of access to the sea, for the sea belongs to mankind. It follows that no people has a right to deprive any other people of the shore, if that people desires the contact.

We now begin to understand the awful sin of partitioning the earth by force.

The subdividing of the land

The question then arises whether lands and other natural resources shall now be divided and redistributed in order that the share-and-share of the earth's patrimony shall be morally just. Undoubtedly the logic of the situation makes for many personal points of very close contact with the mother earth, and contact is usually most definite and best when it results from what we understand as ownership. This, in practice, suggests many small parcels of land--for those who would have their contact by means of land, which is the directest means--under personal fee. But due provision must always be made, as I have already indicated, for the man who makes unusual contribution to the welfare of his fellows, that he may be allowed to extend his service and attain his own full development; and moreover, an established order may not be overturned suddenly and completely without much damage, not only to personal interests but to society. Every person should have the right and the privilege to a personal use of some part of the earth; and naturally the extent of his privilege must be determined by his use of it.

It is urged that lands can be most economically administered in very large units and under corporate management; but the economic results are not the most important results to be secured, although at present they are the most stressed. The ultimate good in the use of land is the development of the people; it may be better that more persons have contact with it than that it shall be executively more effectively administered. The morals of land management is more important than the economics of land management; and of course my reader is aware that by morals I mean the results that arise from a right use of the earth rather than the formal attitudes toward standardized or conventional codes of conduct.

If the moral and the economic ends can be secured simultaneously, as eventually they will be secured, the perfect results will come to pass; but any line of development founded on accountant economics alone will fail.

Here I must pause for an explanation in self-defense, for my reader may think I advise the "little farm well tilled" that has so much captured the public mind. So far from giving such advice, I am not thinking exclusively of farming when I speak of the partitioning of the land. One may have land merely to live on. Another may have a wood to wander in. One may have a spot on which to make a garden. Another may have a shore, and another a retreat in the mountains or in some far space. Much of the earth can never be farmed or mined or used for timber, and yet these supposed waste places may be very real assets to the race: we shall learn this in time. I am glad to see these outlying places set aside as public reserves; and yet we must not so organize and tie up the far spaces as to prevent persons of little means from securing small parcels. These persons should have land that they can handle and manipulate, in which they may dig, on which they may plant trees and build cabins, and which they may feel is theirs to keep and to master, and which they are not obliged to "improve." In the parks and reserves the land may be available only to look at, or as a retreat in which one may secure permission to camp. The regulations are necessary for these places, but these places are not sufficient.

If it were possible for every person to own a tree and to care for it, the good results would be beyond estimation.

Now, farming is a means of support; and in this case, the economic possibilities of a particular piece of land are of primary consequence. Of course, the most complete permanent contact with the earth is by means of farming, when one makes a living from the land; this should produce better results than hunting or sport; but one must learn how to make this connection. It is possible to hoe potatoes and to hear the birds sing at the same time, although our teaching has not much developed this completeness in the minds of the people.

I hope, therefore, that the farmer's piece of land will be economically good (that it may make him a living and produce a surplus for some of the rest of us), and that the farmer may be responsive to his situation. The size of the farm that is to support a family, and the kinds of crops that shall be grown and even the yields that shall be secured to the acre, are technical problems of agriculture. In this New World, with expensive labor and still with cheap land, we cannot yet afford to produce the high yields of some of the Old World places,--it may be better to till more land with less yield to the acre. But all this is aside from my present purpose; and this purpose is to suggest the very real importance of making it possible for an increasing proportion of the people to have close touch with the earth in their own rights and in their own names.

We recognize different grades or kinds of land occupancy, some of it being proprietorship and some of it tenancy and some of it mere shareholding. Thus far have we spoken of the partitioning of the land mostly in its large social and political relations; but to society also belongs the fertility of the land, and all efforts to conserve this fertility are public questions in the best sense. In America we think of tenant occupancy of land as dangerous because it does not safeguard fertility; in fact, it may waste fertility. This is because the practice in tenancy does not recognize the public interest in fertility, and the contract or agreement is made merely between the landowner and the tenant, and is largely an arrangement for skinning the land. It is only when the land itself is a party in the contract (when posterity is considered) that tenancy is safe. Then the tenant is obliged to fertilize the land, to practise certain rotations, and otherwise to conserve fertility, returning to the land the manurial value of products that are sold. When such contracts are made and enforced, tenancy farming does not deplete the land more than other farming, as the experience in some countries demonstrates. It is hardly to be expected, however, that tenant occupancy will give the man as close moral contact with the earth and its materials as will ownership; yet a well-developed tenancy is better than absentee farming by persons who live in town and run the farm by temporary hired help. The tenancy in the United States is partly a preliminary stage to ownership: if we can fulfil the moral obligation to society in the conserving of fertility and other natural resources, tenancy may be considered as a means to an end. Persons who work the land should have the privilege of owning it.

It may be urged by those who contend that land should be held by society, that this regulation of tenancy provides a means of administering all farm lands by government in the interest of maintenance of fertility. Leaving aside the primary desirability, as I see it, of reserving individual initiative, it is to be said that this kind of regulation of the tenant is possible only with a live-stock husbandry; nor do we yet have sufficient knowledge to enable us to project a legal system for all kinds of agriculture; nor again is it applicable to widely differing conditions and regions. A keener sense of responsibility will enable owner and tenant to work out better methods in all cases, but it is now impossible to incorporate complete control methods into successful legislative regulations. The increasing competition will make it ever more difficult for the careless man to make a good living by farming, and he will be driven from the business; or if he is not driven out, society will take away his privilege.

Yet we are not to think of society as founded wholly on small separate tracts, or "family farms," occupied by persons who live merely in contentment; this would mean that all landsmen would be essentially laborers. We need to hold on the land many persons who possess large powers of organization, who are managers, who can handle affairs in a bold way: it would be fatal to the best social and spiritual results if such persons could find no adequate opportunities on the land and were forced into other occupations. Undoubtedly we shall find ourselves with very unlike land units, encouraged and determined by the differing conditions and opportunities in different regions; and thereby shall we also avoid the great danger of making our fundamental occupation to produce a uniform and narrow class spirit.

We need the great example of persons who live separately on their lands, who desire to abide, who are serious in the business, and who have sufficient proprietary rights to enable them to handle the natural resources responsibly. There is a type of well-intentioned writers that would have the farmers live in centres in order that they may have what are called "social" advantages, betaking themselves every morning to the fields when the dew is on the grass and the birds sing, hastening back every evening (probably when the clock points to five) to engage in the delightful delirium of card-parties and moving-picture shows (of course gathering the golden harvest in the meantime). Other writers are to have the farms so small that the residences will be as close as on a village street, and a trolley-car will run through, and I suppose the band will play!