the world," and the serf will never be his model, for the old spirit has
still enough of life left for another blaze, as these new oppressors
will find to their awful cost.

The burdens which these people are staggering under can be easily
imagined when it is known that they have been paying interest on
mortgages for years that the places would not now sell for, even after
they were improved by years of labor and the outlay of much money. In
the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there are homesteads by the
thousands that will not sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the
extraordinary spectacle was witnessed in the city of San Francisco last
year of a bank having to close because it could not sell out the valley
farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course these farmers obtained money
from the bank, and the justice of the bank's claim is not what we are
now trying to get at, but to show that if we had the laws that belong to
a republic the people would not be the victims of bankers or any one
else. Had they been allowed in the first place to take possession of all
unimproved land without having to give up the savings of years to some
land grabber, whose theft was authorized and sustained by law, and then
loaded down with interest obligations, they would have had no more
trouble in keeping their land than they would in keeping an arm or a
leg.

With every one limited to 160 acres there would be so much thrown open
to settlement that it would practically wipe out all mortgages on land,
for the occupant of mortgaged premises, could give his owner the option
of accepting what would be a fair price under the new conditions, and if
it were refused then the occupant could simply back his wagon up, put
his portables on and drive to some of the Government land nearest to
him.