The Influence of the Passing of the Public Lands

THE United States in our time is undergoing profound and far-reaching changes. The first great chapter of the nation’s history is closing with the passing of the public lands. From the earliest years of our national existence almost until the present, the main work of our people was to acquire and to occupy the public domain, continental in extent. The continent, however, is now practically occupied; there are no longer great stretches of free land rich with all manner of unowned, undeveloped resources. We have come, consequently, to new national bases of life, and are forming new national habits. Our country, in truth, has entered a period of fundamental readjustment — economic, social, and political.

So manifold and intricate are the manifestations of this process of adjustment that a thorough discussion of them would be an encyclopædic task; a task, indeed, impossible of accomplishment, since changes are occurring so swiftly as to make our writings out of date while we pen them. The purpose of the present essay is to call attention to the fundamental nature of the process through which we are passing, and to try to discern something of its underlying conditions and consequences.

I

In the period between the close of the Revolutionary War and the adoption of the Compromise of 1850, the government of the United States acquired title to 1,465,000,000 acres of land, — sufficient, were the whole adapted to agriculture, to make more than nine million farms of one hundred and sixty acres each. Not all of this great estate, it is true, invited settlement; but as a whole the public domain held out on an unrivaled scale the allurement of vast primeval forests, of stores of untouched mineral treasures, and of soils fertilized by the accumulations of the ages.

So vast were these resources that men, thinking in terms of industry as it was equipped before the age of modern machinery, considered the forests and the soils and the mines limitless and inexhaustible. To the man of the axe and the sickle and the freight wagon, they were in fact practically inexhaustible. We can understand, accordingly, why the Secretary of the Treasury in 1827 reported that it would take five hundred years to settle the public domain which we then possessed. To the men of his time the public domain was a challenge; the problem was not that of conservation, but of appropriation and utilization.

The task of occupying the continent, to which our fathers bent their energies, was expedited past all forecast by two remarkable developments: the one in the sphere of government, the other in that of industry.

When the nation was born, the common thought in regard to the disposal of the public domain was that the ‘ back lands ’ were to be used for revenue and were to be sold en bloc to capitalists and companies. But the vastness of our lands and the comparatively small number of our citizens, together with democratic reactions between the land and the citizens, produced a new theory and practice of land-disposal. According to this, the public lands were to be expropriated for the good of society: they were to be used in such a way as to give to every citizen no matter how poor (or rather because he was poor) the opportunity to get land, and also, in such a way as to ‘develop the country.’ As part of this practice came the Preëmption Act of 1841 and the Homestead Act of 1862, preceded and accompanied by not a few other enactments.

It is common now to complain bitterly concerning the methods of disposal of our public domain, and every one knows that there has been too much of ‘land-grabbing’ and fraud; but, on the other hand, we do not always take into account the fact that we are looking back upon a cheap-land age from the point of view of a dearland age. Our views of the rightfulness of railroad grants, for example, might be greatly modified if we were transported back to the outlook of investors in the sixties, when the best lands along projected lines were high-priced at one dollar an acre. Contrasted with the land policies of Rome, England, Russia, Spain, — with those of any nation uninfluenced by our example, — our land policy, marred though undoubtedly it has been by specific acts to the advantage of greed, yet as a whole has been beneficent and in the interest of individualistic democracy. In whatever light, however, we may now regard this policy, there is no doubt that it immensely stimulated settlement.

The other force which accelerated the progress of settlement was the use of machinery. Our public domain was settled during the time when the gigantic forces of the Industrial Revolution were transforming the civilized world. The steam engine, the railroad, the reaper, and a thousand other devices, gave man undreamed mastery over nature. Utilizing these prodigious forces, and with ever-accelerating speed, the American population (reinforced by millions of immigrants) subdued the forest, opened the mines, threw out daring lines of railway, broke the prairies — and suddenly came to the end of the task which a century before had seemed so unending. By 1890 the frontier had disappeared, and since that time nearly all of our remaining public lands suited to popular use have passed into individual ownership. The annual report of the Department of the Interior for 1910 revealed that, excluding Alaska, our unappropriated and unreserved lands of all kinds then amounted to 343,486,000 acres; and these lands for the most part are inferior. There are no more great stretches of fertile land in the United States inviting occupation. The romance and rush of settlement are over. The real West has vanished. ‘The United States has entered a new economic era,’ notes a thoughtful editorial in one of our magazines, ‘and profound changes are coming in the qualities and character of our people.’¹

II

A primary result of this swift settling of the public lands was that the output of products of the soil, of the forests, and of the mines was increased at a rate unmatched in history. This increase exerted a profound influence not only upon the United States, but upon foreign nations. Our cattle and hogs gave us meat in abundance and left a large surplus for export. Our wheat crop, which in 1840 amounted to eighty-four millions of bushels, thirty years later came to two hundred and thirty-five millions, and a generation later still reached seven hundred millions. Within less than an ordinary lifetime (1840-1900) our corn production rose from three hundred and seventy-seven millions of bushels to more than two billions and a half. The value of our annual production of lumber increased in the last half of the last century from about fifty million to more than five hundred million. The bullion from our gold-fields enlarged the business of the world, and by gigantic strides we took the first place among the nations in the production of coal and of iron.

Now this enormously increased production insured that the necessities of life should be comparatively cheap. The cheapness and plentifulness of necessities were among the main factors in that great growth of population which, not alone in this country but also in Europe, was one of the most marked and important features of the history of the nineteenth century; and this new plenty helped, moreover, to concentrate that population in large cities. Probably in no period of history were the common people so easily fed, clothed, and sheltered as in the United States during our public-land era.

With the passing of the public lands, however, one general and controlling condition operates powerfully in many directions: this is that the United States, as never before in its history, and with continually increasing necessity, is now confronted by the law of diminishing returns. This law, as is well known, postulates in general that, beyond a certain limit of productiveness, increasing application of labor and capital to given natural resources, whether soil, timber, or minerals, does not result in proportionate increase of yields. Soils become poorer (unless the tendency is counteracted by costly processes), timber supplies become more remote or of inferior quality, mines become deeper. Consequently, after the virginal fertility of soil is once utilized, after the native growth of large trees which are easily accessible has been cut, after the coal and iron and gold which lie near the surface have been mined, production proceeds at a more halting or more expensive pace.

It is true that the operation of this law may be temporarily postponed by new discoveries in technique (as, for example, modern processes in the production of gold), but in the long run it holds sway. Hitherto in the United States we have been availing ourselves prodigally of the lavish bounties of new soils, untouched forests, and mineral deposits advantageously placed. Now, and in the future, an increasing production at all commensurate to the needs of our growing population must be won only at the price of more painstaking and enlightened methods, by continually bringing to bear fine and well-directed ingenuity, and by re-creating, supplementing, and hoarding our natural resources with the greatest care.

An important result of our being brought more certainly under the law of diminishing returns is the rise in the cost of living — a phenomenon viewed apprehensively by all classes. Now, it is true that the high cost of living is due to many and intricate factors, — among them the disappearance of the simple habits and tastes of pioneer days, — and that the factor operating most widely has been the increased production of gold; but, if the production of gold had remained stationary, the United States would have experienced a marked rise in the price of necessities because of the passing of our public lands. For example, consider the effect on the supply of cattle: the census of 1910 reported the number of our beef cattle at 41,178,000, an estimate less by ten million head than that of the Department of Agriculture for 1907. The latest estimate, made January 1, 1914, indicates 35,855,000. The total value of this class of animals was estimated in 1910 at $785,261,000; January 1, 1914, the estimated value was $1,116,333,000. The number of cattle, therefore, declined 12.9 per cent in four years, while the total value increased 42.2 per cent. Should we wonder at the higher prices of meats and leather? Again, consider that, whereas our population increased 21 per cent between 1900 and 1910, our improved farm acreage increased only 15.4 per cent. Although in the future there may be again years like 1912, when unusually favorable crops may temporarily lower prices, nevertheless the era of extremely cheap food in the United States has passed forever. The same is true also, subject to industrial modifications and temporary reversions, with regard to productions from all our natural resources. There may be a fall in prices due to general financial conditions or unusually favorable crops; but we are not likely again to have large production of the necessities of life won so easily and cheaply as in the past. The sooner we as a people become conscious that we are in a new economic era the better it will be for us. We have come to the time when we may no longer waste; we must conserve.

But, on the other hand, may not the pressure of new conditions lead us to harsh and unjust judgments upon former generations whose work and outlook in life were largely shaped by the apparently illimitable expanse of new lands? Great production from new lands at times became over-production and resulted in abnormally low prices; and abnormally low prices necessitated utilizing only the cream of our national resources. When coal was less than a dollar a ton at the mine and slack coal could be used only for grading roads, merely the best deposits could be profitably mined. When lumber was a drug on the market, conservation worried no one. The pioneer farmer who had to sell his wheat at fifty cents or less a bushel could not pay high rates of interest and expensive charges of all sorts without depleting the soil. The fact that the value of all manner of natural resources has been enormously enhanced by the passing of the public lands makes conservation now an economic and social necessity; but producers of all sorts were on quite different economic bases so long as they had to meet the competition of new areas.

Indeed, is not the main problem of the whole civilized world, as well as that of the United States, changing in regard to natural resources? Man before the Industrial Revolution was a puny creature feebly attacking with almost naked hands the ‘inexhaustible’ resources of stem and dominant Nature, exhausting them only in a small degree and within limited areas; now the efficiency of man has been so marvelously strengthened by machinery, and Nature’s treasures are subject to such powerful and varied means of attack, that the attitude of the civilized world with regard to its natural resources is changing from one of conquest to one of preservation. Exploitation is giving way everywhere to conservation. But in the United States this general change is made particularly urgent and grave because of the passing of the public lands.

This decisive shifting of the economic bases of our life is having other important effects. Monopoly acquires a new and portentous significance when opportunity for competition through the development of new areas is forever closed. The unrestricted private ownership of lands of all sorts is being questioned in the interest of the public good. The processes and factors in distribution from primary producer to ultimate consumer are being closely scrutinized. Pension systems and methods of welfare work are being developed which would have been resented by the individualists of frontier times. Instead of free lands, trade-schools and technical education are to afford to our youth opportunities for getting a start in life and for gaining a competence. Competition for jobs becomes more stern. Efficiency is being insisted upon as never before, both in private and in public life. No longer can easygoing, slip-shod, exploitive methods be tolerated. We are engaged, in fact, in a great national stock-taking and housecleaning.

In politics also we have reached a new time. The old Jeffersonian theory that the sphere of government ought to be restricted as much as possible in order to leave the widest possible scope to individuals, is being displaced by the practice of enlarging the functions of government in the interest of the common good. Government, therefore, is becoming less a field for private exploitation and more an instrument of social service. The change is revealed in discussion of specific questions —compare the political platforms of the eighties, for example, with the platforms of the last national campaign. Even the tariff question has taken on a new complexion, as witness the late legislation for reciprocity with Canada, which at bottom was due to desire to prolong the old cheap-food era in the United States and to mollify or stave off the rigors of the new period by utilizing the fresh areas of Canada. Witness, likewise, the present movement toward free trade in farm-products and in raw materials.

In many other respects also our political life reflects the new conditions. If one will pause for a moment and review in his mind the number, character, and swiftness of the political changes which have occurred since about 1890, he will perhaps be ready to call their sum a revolution. Not all of these changes, to be sure, are directly due to the passing of the public lands, but few of them are wholly unrelated to it, and many are results.

There are two main aspects of our national life and well-being which are of so much importance in themselves, and which appear to be so significantly affected by the process through which we are passing, that I wish to dwell upon them at some length. These are the influence of the passing of the public lands upon agriculture and its influence upon democracy.

III

The first point to be noted in regard to the effect of the passing of the public lands upon agriculture is that there has been in the last decade an astounding rise in farm-values. The aggregate value of all farm property in the United States doubled between 1900 and 1910; that is, in a single decade as much value accrued as in all the years of our preceding history. In some sections the percentage of increase was of course higher than the average: in South Dakota, for example, farm-values in the decade rose 291.9 per cent, and in Idaho 353.9 per cent. The economic and social effects of these great accretions in land-values are bound to be of the utmost importance. Interest charges (which in the past have been met by rise in values) must now be reckoned in the cost of production; landowners find themselves capitalists; laborers are further removed than ever from ownership of land.

These higher values, it is true, may be due in part to the general rise of prices which has accompanied increased gold production, and the future may possibly see a lowering of prices of farm-lands, should the gold-supply wane. But the supply of good farmland in the United States is now limited, whereas the demand is unlimited; consequently, values of farm-lands in proportion to other commodities have reached a permanently higher level than that of the past.

The increase is accounted for in part, moreover, by higher prices for products. Between 1899 and 1909 the total value of all cereals raised in the United States increased 79.8 per cent, while the total yield increased only 1.7 per cent. Yields and, consequently, prices, will vary from year to year, and it is gratifying to know that (according to the reports of the Department of Agriculture) the per-acre yield in the United States, notwithstanding increasing utilization of inferior lands, is becoming gradually higher. But it must not be forgotten that greater yields due to more scientific farming are won at the cost of expensive processes; ‘high’ farming must be based on high prices. Very significant, also, is the fact that our cultivated acreage increase, in spite of still active homesteading in some of our western states, is becoming small. Between 1879 and 1889 the area planted to cereals increased sixtysix million acres, between 1889 and 1899 forty-five million acres, but in the past decade there were added only six million acres. In that same decade population increased sixteen millions. Enhanced farm-values, therefore, and higher prices of farm products seem firmly based upon a disproportionate increase of population and cultivated area. In fact, before agriculture in the United States can be placed upon a permanent footing which will reckon exhaustion of soil capital, producers of staple crops must receive still higher prices than those which they are now receiving. It is this fact, along with prevailing high prices to consumers, which has brought about the great movement which aims at more economical methods of marketing crops.

An important consequence of greater proportionate demand for farm products in this country is the decline in our agricultural exports. Between 1900 and 1910 our exports of wheat fell off 100,000,000 bushels. Mr. G. K. Holmes, an expert statistician of the United States Department of Agriculture, summarizes conditions by saying that, ‘most of the cereals and their products, all of the animals and most of the meats and their products, are going down in quantity of exports.’ Food-stuffs now constitute only one fifth of our total exports. One effect of this change is that the prices of our leading farm-staples are becoming yearly less dependent upon European markets, and that, consequently, for the first time in our history the tariff is becoming more an object of direct concern to our grain and meat producers. A second effect, manifestly, is that we have come to a time when our imports must be paid for in other than agricultural products. In other words we are becoming preëminently a manufacturing rather than an agricultural nation. It would not be at all surprising, therefore, if our manufacturers should come soon to favor a low tariff.

A marked consequence of the rise in land-values and of higher prices for products is the utilization of inferior lands. Irrigation and drainage are reclaiming fertile spots otherwise waste, and dry-farming methods have led to a great extension of the farming area (at the expense of the ranges) in all of our plains states; while at the same time there has been an extraordinary reverse movement toward the neglected farming regions of the East. The rehabilitation of the farming industry in the latter section, indeed, is one of the most important and pleasing features of the new era.

In fact a revolution is being effected in agriculture. However natural and often defensible, under the economic conditions of the free-land era, exploitive methods may have been, they are now not only unsuited to the present age, but are reprehensible from the standpoint of its needs and instincts. Instead, scientific methods are displacing the old as rapidly perhaps as we have a right to expect. The full effect of the movement toward a scientific, permanent system of agriculture will probably not be felt until the children and young people who are now being trained in the new agriculture take their places in life. No one who comes into contact with the boys and girls of our great corn-growing and breadmaking contests and like movements, or with the earnest students in our agricultural colleges, can fail to appreciate the great renovation of agriculture which is preparing.

As a result partly of the widening influence of our agricultural colleges and partly of numerous coöperating agencies, a new set of ideals is being created with regard to country life. The nation as a whole, in fact, is making a reëstimation of rural life. With the coming of dear lands, city people have awakened to a new interest in country affairs and a new respect for country inhabitants. There is before us in the United States the opportunity to develop perhaps the finest type of rural civilization that the world has ever known. The ownership of land in past ages has always been most honorable, but the working of it has been regarded generally as degrading. The actual farmers, equipped with their poor, pitiable instruments, and condemned to unceasing and disheartening toil, have been slaves, serfs, heathen, pagans, boors, peasants. But to-day the use of machinery and new facilities for communication make it possible for the same individual to be a tiller of the soil and a gentleman.

There is some question, however, whether this opportunity will be rightly appreciated and used. Farm-tenantry in the United States has increased twelve per cent in the last thirty years, despite homesteading. In some regions self-respecting farmers are being effaced by certain types of foreigners who have a ‘ more efficient standard of living.’ The question is being widely considered, moreover, whether we are not tending to capitalistic ownership of land, and therewith to a tenantry system or to a system of managers and laborers. Some of our leaders of economic thought appear willing to condone the admitted social loss arising from such systems, under the plea of ‘economic necessity’ or the good of added production. It is true that the latter we must have, and it certainly behooves the individualistic pioneer farmer to recognize the new order of things, change his methods, and bring about greater production, if he would avoid ultimate extermination; but the history of land-tenure in the Roman Republic and in England suggests the very grave danger of allowing economic considerations undue control over social welfare. England is now trying to undo some of the evil working of ‘ economic necessity ’ by a forced breaking up of estates under the Small Holdings Act. If there is danger of capitalistic control of our farm-land, it would be better now to begin to shape our rural system on right and enlightened lines than to hand on to future generations a problem vastly more intricate.

We may possibly find of advantage in the shaping of land-tenure the use of discriminatory taxation for the purpose of social control. Large tracts which are now held unutilized or only partially utilized by speculators — tracts which are a cause of grievous social retardation to some communities — ought to be so heavily taxed that the holders would be compelled either to put them to better use or to sell out. In the second place, taxation might be so arranged as to favor the man who lives on his farm to the disadvantage of the one who does not. And in the third place, we may see outway ultimately to tax the unearned increment, which is a great cause for speculation and instability on the part of our farming population. Forms of taxation such as these, moreover, might tend to keep land-values within reach of those wanting homes and to insure healthful and attractive social conditions in the open country.

Better credit facilities also promise great advantages both for aiding production and for facilitating acquisition of land by the landless. On one point, however, the betterment of rural credits ought to be severely guarded — that they be not used by farmers merely to buy more land. One main desire of most American farmers is to acquire another forty or one hundred and sixty. Lower rates of interest and better terms, if money were used for this purpose, might result simply in more slovenly farming and higher prices of land. Rightly used, however, improved systems of credit and other well-directed devices may bring about both a finer country life and a greater agricultural production — our goals as we pass from the free-land era to the restricted-land era.

The transformation which is under way in agricultural life is but a part of the vast process of change through which we are passing. In this process the most far-reaching and vital problems have to do with the influence upon American democracy of the passing of the public lands.

IV

The growth of modern democracy has been closely identified with individualism; and in the United States both the laissez-faire theory and the occupation of the public lands in the era just closing combined to produce an extraordinary development of individualism. Now, individualism in relation to society has its good and its evil tendencies; and both were apparent in our public-land era.

The virtues of individualism were strongly accentuated in the inhabitants of our new regions. Men became selfreliant, hardy, aggressive. They learned to depend upon their own judgment, courage, and resourcefulness, and to scorn dependence and weakness. They were undaunted by obstacles and acquired the habit of overcoming difficulties. Power of achievement grew within them, and the call of a great country and of a large future impelled initiative and enterprise ever to attempts more bold and more vast. Under the spell which the West cast upon its children, they wrought with hope and enthusiasm and optimism; many a man was lifted by the new country from discouragement and weakness and littleness to valor of heart and health of body and breadth of personality. Hardships were cheerfully and at times heroically undergone, calamities and misfortunes were courageously endured and rapidly re paired. Little trammeled by the past, the pioneers became versatile and progressive, skilled in adjusting both their lives and their institutions to new environments.

But the individualistic democracy of our era of public lands had also defects. It was often over-self-confident. Ours was the most glorious country in all the world. Our system of government was of such a high degree of perfection that we looked pityingly upon other less fortunate nations — overlooking, with a promoter’s disregard, small defects like graft and municipal misgovernment. In free America, moreover, we needed no governing class, no specialists in government, for every American citizen was confident that he could step into almost any office and run it well. Mistakes of all sorts — economic, social, and political — were quickly cured by the unceasing expansion into the great public domain, and prosperity constituted an invulnerable argument in favor of all our policies.

Easily connected with over-confidence was the habit of running risks. An American was willing to take his chances in any sort of enterprise; he loved the excitement of hazard, whether in mining, gambling, real-estate deals, or politics. If he failed, could he not go to some new region and make a fresh start? He often became reckless, moreover, with regard to his own life and the lives of others. ‘How about such and such a steamboat?' inquired one miner of another as they stood on the bank of a river in the far West. ‘She is good enough for passengers,’ was the response, ‘but I would n’t trust treasure in her.’ We were reckless and over-confident in business also. We grew feverish in speculation, and every generation had to have its head cleared by a panic.

Along with speculation went haste and waste. We boasted of the quickness with which we did things and reckoned not the cost; we reveled in the richness of our resources, and thought not of the morrow. We skimmed our mines and exhausted our soils and slashed our woods, intent only on immediate gain. We became a prey to ‘nervous prosperity,’ and each hasted to get ahead of the other in occupying and possessing and accumulating.

In the rush for wealth we grew disregardful of the rights of others. The wilderness was no place for weaklings, the prizes were for the strong and the successful. In the rapidity of our settlement of the public domain our population often outran government, and the instruments of social control in new regions were usually weak. We acquired something of contempt for the slow workings of government, and we learned how to evade or to cow the law.

These habits—over-confidence, recklessness, waste, disregard for law — we Americans of the new era recognize as evils which must be inhibited. We have come, indeed, to a time of larger social control. The democracy of the public-land era was individualistic; the democracy of the new time is to be a socialized democracy.

Notwithstanding defects in our pioneer democracy, however, it was a genuine and sincere democracy; and it was so vitally connected with our public lands, that their passing raises profound problems touching the very existence of our democracy.

It would probably be incorrect, nevertheless, to ascribe the growth of democracy in America solely to our public lands; for modern industrialism has permeated the nations with democratic leaven, and particularly in western Europe has produced democratic tendencies in nations which possess no public lands. Other forces also have been at work. Yet it may be worth while to notice that the example of America has been a considerable incentive to European strivings, and that the escape of great numbers of emigrants out of European conditions has helped to make more impossible the permanent subjection of the European populace. The growth of democracy in European countries at least synchronizes with the great modern migrations to the United States — the greatest migrations known to history. And in this way the public lands of the United States may not have been without influence in the development of a greater measure of freedom in Europe.

Conditions, at any rate, were made favorable for democracy in the United States by our public lands. In the first place, they tended to cause a considerable degree of economic equality among our people. Out on the frontier the conditions were such as to produce a large measure of financial equality, or at least of financial opportunity. Poor men in the East could go out West and take up land or enter business in new communities and in a few years might have a good start in life. In the case of many a young man, the public lands took the place of wealthy ancestors. In thinking of the equalizing tendencies of our public lands, moreover, it should be borne in mind that they not only offered opportunity to farmers and prospectors, but that they gave chances in life also, in new and growing towns, to lawyers, bankers, merchants, carpenters, editors, and in general to men of various callings. The public lands absorbed the surplus in all occupations. The consequence was that not only were the individuals benefited who went forth upon them, but the supply of labor in the older centres, whether physical or professional, was proportionately decreased and therefore better recompensed. While the plaint of the poor or of the aggrieved was not wanting, few were predestined to poverty without hope of substantial rise; such inequality of wealth as obtained was not felt by individuals or classes to be permanent.

Our public lands, in the second place, tended to produce social equality. On the frontier, a man’s standing depended upon his personal prowess and character. ‘Family’ counted for nothing; one man was just as good as another. ‘In the gulch,’ observed the Montana Post in 1865, ‘Major Blank wheels while Colonel Carat fills.’ So long as men could migrate from the East to such communities, it was impossible for class-distinctions to become well established, and we had no permanently submerged class. The United States has known little thus far of those sorrowful problems of dire misery and degradation which have so perpetually haunted older countries; nor has it known such grave crises of social agitation. The public lands, in fact, furnished a safety-valve for social discontent.

An example of the healthful effects of the public lands was shown by the ease with which, at the close of the Civil War, our numerous soldiery reentered peaceful pursuits. Thousands of them took up free land or engaged in railroad construction in the West. Contrast our happy experience in this respect with the want and pain and disaster which befell the laboring population of Great Britain when, at the close of the Napoleonic wars, large numbers of discharged soldiers and sailors swelled the labor-supply.

A third tendency was the propagation of political equality. Our nation at its birth was decidedly more aristocratic politically than at present. One man in six then had the franchise, and a host of restrictions aimed to confine office-holding to the ‘well-born.’ In the Convention which framed our Constitution there was marked distrust of a popular electorate. ‘The people,’ urged Roger Sherman, ‘should have as little as may be to do about the government’; and Gerry, of Massachusetts, claimed that, ‘The evils we experience flow from the excess of Democracy.’ Our presidents for the first forty years of our nation were aristocrats. The forces, on the other hand, which have made for equality in our history — anti-federalism, Jacksonian democracy, populism, insurgency, progressivism — were generated principally in the West. The newer areas, likewise, have been areas of constant innovation and experimentation in governmental democracy— witness Oklahoma and Arizona. ‘Thus we have from the earliest periods of the trans-Alleghany movement down to the latest period,’ says Mr. R. T. Hill in his Public Domain and Democracy, ‘constant democratic political movements which have successively borne marks of the social and economic conditions peculiar to a new country and particularly to conditions dominating the huge American Public Domain.’

V

If, then, the public lands have conduced to wide democratic equality, what will be in this respect the effect of their passing? Will the new era tend to inequality? Is such inequality inimical to democracy? Can tendencies to inequality, if such develop, be controlled by society? What forms shall social control take, and to what extent can it be healthfully exercised?

He would be very presumptuous indeed who should attempt now to answer these grave questions, but one may at least consider whether there are indications that stratification is proceeding. In the first place we may raise the question as to the so-called lower classes. Is social distress becoming in our time more persistent and more difficult of amelioration? It is true that, in the past, numbers of the laboring class, caught by habits, occupation, or remoteness from the new lands, lived under conditions which were evil; but there was always a chance for escape to new environment, if not for the sufferers themselves, then for their children. So long as we had great areas of public lands, individuals could escape from untoward conditions, and the formation of a class in permanent inferiority was impossible. To-day the ownership of land, or such change in economic circumstances as will permit an individual laborer to step out of his class, is becoming more and more difficult. In the older time sons of poverty-stricken parents were urged to develop themselves and to aspire to rise higher as individuals; to-day young men are urged to become efficient employees, with the prospect of making a permanent living as employees. The very means of amelioration of bad conditions point not to a man’s rising out of his class, but to his betterment as a member of his class. Of such nature are the various phases of social insurance, pension systems, and unionization.

Even in the sphere of education the question is already being raised whether trade and technical schools, indispensable in many respects as they appear to our new democracy, nevertheless may not induct the masses into careers dwarfed of initiative and aspiration. ‘Shall we not in giving the vocational training,’ suggests Professor A, D. Weeks, ‘intensify vocational and professional distinctions and instead of a democracy, consisting, let us admit, of a certain equality of inefficiency, set up a society which will be administratively more perfect, but consisting of impenetrable strata?’

On the other hand, how about the tendency toward the formation of an aristocracy?

There is no doubt that to-day we have enormous inequality of wealth. The greater part of the wealth of the country, and to a still greater extent the control of the wealth of the country, is in the hands of a small minority of the people. That this condition is a result in part of the unrestricted individualism of the public-land era, does not alter the fact. Time was when we thought that the evil of great accumulation of wealth would cure itself; that which the father accumulated the son, or certainly the grandson, would scatter. Cases of this sort did occur in the ups and downs of the period when the wealthy man ran risks along with the rest of us. But present-day aggregations of wealth have been projected over from the period of rapid economic change to the period of greater economic fixation; our great fortunes now run few risks, their gambles are wellnigh sure things. Consequently, personal mediocrity or weakness on the part of the heirs of large fortunes usually cannot seriously endanger those fortunes. Certainly one of the most vital and menacing problems for the democracy of the new era is whether immense fortunes gained in a competitive era by exploitive methods shall be perpetuated and increased in an era in which for the masses there can be no opportunities for exploitation.

While, in general, conditions in rural regions point to the continuance of a middle class upon our farms, yet it is to be noted that the possession of a farm of from eighty to three hundred and twenty acres, with the expensive equipment now required to run it, is quite out of the reach of very large numbers of our population at present prices. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that even in the country social stratification is proceeding by insensible and natural steps; in the cities disparity of fortune and social cleavage are already clearly marked. The tendencies toward economic and social equality which, as we have noted, were marked features of our public-land era, seem fast vanishing into history.

Will the political equality survive? Can the democracy which was created in a period of industrial expansion and social instability, and infused with the laissez-faire theory, be effective in a period of comparative industrial limitation and social fixation?

This is our problem, and we are hard at work upon it. We are making use of our political equality to try to gain greater social and economic equality. The strivings of our national life in this endeavor are earnest and strong. Evidences of the effort occur in our reform of the civil service, our secret ballot, our direct primaries; in regulation of railways and corporations, in publicity requirements, in life-insurance safeguards; in employers’ liability laws, income and inheritance taxes, and in schemes of social insurance and social betterment. Education is being transformed from the ideal of training for individual success to that of social competence and service. We are apparently beginning to realize also that a new period in the country’s development calls for a new policy with regard to immigration. Our democracy must not be weakened by dilutions of poverty and ignorance from abroad if it is to solve the problems with which it is confronted.

In some respects our problems are made more pressing because of our having had public lands in the past. We have lagged behind older countries in making social adjustments. For example, in compulsory or state insurance of the working classes with regard to life, accidents, sickness, non-employment, and old age, we are a generation behind Germany, England, and a number of other nations.

All along the line, however, our democracy is moving forward. Either voluntarily or through conscription, even our wealthy men are learning to march with the people, for it is one of the most encouraging facts in the outlook that our holders of great wealth are by no means unresponsive to tides of social feeling. Let our democracy be self-controlled and sane, let it avoid war, let it limit excessive reproduction and immigration, let it redirect education, let it conserve the strength and health and well-being of its citizens, and we may hope for success in the delicate and complicated and trying adjustments which we are making as we pass from the era of public lands.