wer of the landlord, who is often
oppressive.

Calvin, in his letter of apology for usury of money, speaks of the
injustice of the landlords in requiring a rental for "some barren
farm" and of the "harsher" conditions imposed upon the tenants. Indeed
his whole argument, when summed up, is, that the usury of lands is
more cruel and oppressive than the usury of money.

While it is not yet true in America, yet considering the landlordships
of Ireland and Great Britain and the older countries, with their
unremitted exactions, grinding the life out of their tenants for a
mere subsistence, it is likely that the race is today suffering more
from the injustice and oppression of usury of land than from the usury
of money.

The land question is too large for one short chapter or for one small
book. It requires more and deeper study than the subject has ever yet
received. The ownership of lands cannot be absolute; it must be
limited by the rights of those who live upon them, but the limitations
have never yet been clearly defined. If a man has a right to live he
must have a right to a place to live. If a child has a right to be
born it must have a right to a place to be born. It cannot be that the
mass of our race only touch the earth by the sufferance of those who
claim to own it.

The unprecedented rapidity of the development of this country is owing
more to its wise and beneficent land laws than to anything else. They
are not perfect but the most favorable to the landless that the world
has ever known. No landlordism, no binding up lands by entail to make
it forever impossible to gain a title to a portion of the soil, but
our land laws, wisely devised, gave hope of a home to the homeless
everywhere. The result was that our people from the eastern part of
our own country, and the landless from across the seas, swarmed over
the mountains and filled the Ohio valley and pushed on to the great
Mississippi and Missouri valleys, and in three generations have
transformed this waste into happy homes. The possession of land, of a
home, ennobles the character, produces a patriotic love of this
country and stimulates devotion to her institutions. The landless
foreigner who makes here a home of his own is unwavering in his
loyalty to the country of his adoption. Those foreigners, who do not
fall in love with our institutions and do not become assimilated with
our people, are tenants here as they were before they came here. They
are no