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At the South, the number of land owners—outside of the cities—was, in 1860 no more than 159,000, most of these owners of extensive tracts of land. That number now can hardly be more than 200,000, as there is nowhere at the South an effort going on to attract white settlers from the North in greater numbers, and most lands offered for sale are in remote and little coveted neighborhoods. In Texas and California there are almost none but large landed estates, and rare chances for men of small means to become independent farmers or small capitalists. Ever since 1861 Congress has donated to monopolies almost all the desirable lands fit for free homesteads, and David Wells, who was for years connected with our Department of the Interior, says there are scarcely any acceptable homestead lands left. In consequence of this waste of our public domain, the price of all raw lands within the states, and still more that of cultivated farms, had been rising prodigously, down to the great crisis. Since then it has come down to, perhaps, one-half, but now there are hardly any more laborers able to turn to farming.
It is a fact that our country is now no longer a new country, but resembles the old countries of Europe in every respect, except the density of the population. But this latter feature is no advantage if all the desirable lands are private property, and dear beyond the means of a wages laborer. It is also true that as yet about one-half of our voters are small farmers who by dint of hard labor of all their family, of great economy, average crops, and tolerable prices were able to bridge over the last four years. But they cannot be called a prosperous class; and they will be less so from year to year. In former days they could make up for the low prices of their products by the steady rise of the price of their lands, which, within one generation, would be from two or three to ten or twenty-fold. This favor of circumstances is forever ended. There is no longer a great tide of emigrants from Europe, able to buy lands, and there is no longer a numerous young generation of natives willing to toil on and on in the fields, if their lands are no longer to rise considerably in price within a few years, and their products are to leave only small net profits. And the increasing number of city and industrial laborers being reduced to a lower living—a scantier consumption—will not sufficiently raise the price of farm produce to indemnify the farmers for the slow growth of the capital sunk in their farms. European wars cannot always be expected to open markets for our grains and cattle in the Old World, and whenever they do, there capitalistic farming is invited on a large scale. Farming on a large scale with machines, chemicals, draining, and subsoiling, improved breeds of domestic animals and rational division of labor
