tants. And even to-day, the public
ownership of land finds its justifiers in such men as Adolf Samter,
Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, who on other domains of the Social Question
are ready to rest content with half-measures.[194]

The well-being of the population depends first of all upon the proper
cultivation of the land. To raise the same to the highest degree of
perfection is eminently a matter of public concern. That the
cultivation of the land can reach the necessary high degree of
perfection neither under the large, nor the middle, least of all under
the small landlord system, has been previously shown. The most
profitable cultivation of land depends not merely upon the special care
bestowed upon it. Elements come here into consideration that neither the
largest private holder, nor the mightiest association of these is equal
to cope with. These are elements that lap over, even beyond the reach of
the State and require international treatment.

Society must first of all consider the land as a whole--its
topographical qualities, its mountains, plains, woods, lakes, rivers,
ponds, heaths, swamps, moors, etc. The topography, together with the
geographical location of land, both of which are unchangeable, exercises
certain influences upon climate and the qualities of the soil. Here is
an immense field on which a mass of experience is to be gathered and a
mass of experiments to be made. What the State has done until now in
this line is meager. What with the small means that it applies to these
purposes, and what with the limitations imposed upon it by the large
landlords, who even if the State were willing, would check it, little or
nothing has been done. The State could do nothing on this field without
greatly encroaching upon private property. Seeing, however, that its
very existence is conditioned upon the safe-keeping and "sacredness" of
private property, the large landlords are vital to it, and it is
stripped of the power, even if it otherwise had the will, to move in
that direction. Socialist society will have the task of undertaking vast
improvements of the soil,--raising woods here, and dismantling others
yonder, draining and irrigating, mixing and changing of soil, planting,
etc., in order to raise the land to the highest point of productivity
that it is capable of.

An important question, connected with the improvement of the land, is
the contrivance of an ample and systematically planned network of rivers
an