rmined to
thwart the purpose of the absentee owners to gain an increment from
their sacrifice and labor.

The landlord has a right to all that he has produced. When he has
cleared away the forest or broken up the land; when he has planted the
vineyard and builded the winepress, he has a right to let this out to
husbandmen to gather the fruits of his preparation and planting and to
share with them in the proportion each has contributed to the
production, but to hold all that he himself has produced and yet claim
a part of the product of another, is usury. A farmer retires from his
farm because no longer able or willing to continue its cultivation. He
has an undisputed right to a full reward for all his own labor, and
for all he has purchased from others that he leaves in the farm. There
must be a compensation for the transformation of the wilderness into a
farm at the first, for the fertility that may have been added to the
soil, for the orchards, vineyards, houses, barns and every improvement
he may have made and left on the farm. He has an undisputed right to
all the labor remaining in the farm. If he sells he expects
compensation for all this.

But if he sells, he must begin at once to consume its price, unless he
becomes a usurer and is supported by the interest. If he does not
sell, but retains his farm, he must also begin at once to consume the
farm.

For him to demand of his tenant that the farm shall remain as valuable
as when he left it, the soil not permitted to become less fertile,
the buildings to be kept from decay and restored when destroyed, the
orchards to be kept vigorous and young by the planting of new trees
and vines; in short, the farm to be preserved in full value and yet
pay a rental, is usury in land.

The preservation of a farm or land and its restoration to the owner
unimpaired after a term of years involves far more than persons not
informed suppose. It seems to them unreasonable to farm a field and
only return the unimpaired field to the owner.

While land is stable and possibly the most easily preserved of all
forms of property, at least a thief cannot carry it away, yet the
preservation of land involves great care and risk.

The taking of any crop from any land reduces its fertility. On the
virgin, western fertile lands the farmers laughed at the thought that
they should ever need to return fertilizers, but it was only a few
years until they yearned for the fertility they had extrava