neer has no object save to get rich; the government
of pioneers has no object save to develop the country quickly. To this
object everything is sacrificed, including the interests of future
generations. All new countries have taken the most obvious and easy
course. They have given away for nothing, or for a song, the whole of
their natural resources to anybody who will undertake to exploit them.
And those who have appropriated this wealth have judged it to be theirs
by a kind of natural right. "These farms, mines, forests,
oilsprings--of course they are ours. Did not we discover them? Did not
we squat upon them? Have we not 'mixed our labour with them'?" If
pressed as to the claims of later comers they would probably reply that
there remains "as much and as good" for others. And this of course is
true for a time; but for a very short time, even when it is a continent
that is being divided up. Practically the whole territory of the United
States is now in private ownership. Still, the owners have made such
good use of their opportunities that they have created innumerable
opportunities for non-owners. Artisans get good wages; lawyers make
fortunes; stock and share holders get high dividends. Every one feels
that he is nourishing, and flourishing by his own efforts. He has no
need to combine with his fellows; or, if he does combine, is ready to
desert them in a moment when he sees his own individual chance.

But this is only a phase; and inevitably, by the logic of events, there
supervenes upon it another on which, it would appear, America is just
now entering. With all her natural resources distributed among
individuals or corporations, and with the tide of immigration unchecked,
she begins to feel the first stress of the situation of which the
tension in Europe has already become almost intolerable. It is the
situation which cannot fail to result from the system of private
property and inheritance established throughout the Western world.
Opportunities diminish, classes segregate. There arises a caste of
wage-earners never to be anything but wage-earners; a caste of
property-owners, handing on their property to their descendants; and
substantially, after all deductions have been made for exaggeration and
simplification, a division of society into capitalists and proletarians.
American society is beginning to crystallise out into the forms of
European society. For, once more, America is nothing new; she is a
repetition o