X.

Limit the ownership of land, be it arable, grazing, timber, or any other
kind, to 160 acres. As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth of
property all told, this 160 acres will have to be reduced as we get near
to the centres of population. This will still give the owner of such
convenient land an advantage over those living further out, who will
always be willing to exchange should the first rather follow the coarser
grades of farming to dairying or gardening.

Neither is there any reason why the owning of great sections of timber
land by one or two men should be necessary to the running of sawmills
and supplying the people with lumber. The mills are capable of doing
just as good work if the fifty quarter sections are owned by fifty men
as they are if owned by one man. And the waste of timber seen on every
hand wherever you find a mill owned and operated by capitalists would
have been unknown if there had been an individual owner to each quarter
section. The wanton waste of this breed of the capitalist, in his hurry
to pile up, would have been impossible had his mill been a "custom"
mill, to saw the timber from your quarter section and mine instead of
his fifty or five hundred. And the poor unskilled laborer would not have
to go to make room for the chinaman, or that member of a worthless tribe
who sold his "claim" to the "company" for so much and the promise of a
job. The small owner cannot afford the waste of the large one. His
income will not be so great that he can afford to waste the principal
from which it comes. As to any friction about whose turn it is to run
his timber through, it is only necessary to say that the business will
be then carried on by those who are now doing the labor, and it will be