cade--a decade full of bitter distress to the working
population of the United States, and marked by widespread suffering--the
price shot up to $900,000. By 1894--a panic year, in which millions of
men were out of work and in a state of appalling destitution--a quarter
of an acre reached the gigantic value of $1,250,000.[173] At this
identical time large numbers of the working class, which had so largely
created this value, were begging vainly for work, and were being evicted
by the tens of thousands in Chicago because they could not pay rent for
their miserable, cramped habitations.

By exchanging a few hundred, or a few thousand dollars, in Chicago's
extreme youth, for a scrap of paper called a deed, the buyer of this
land found himself after the lapse of years, a millionaire. It did not
matter where or how he obtained the purchase money: whether he swindled,
or stole, or inherited it, or made it honestly;--so long as it was not
counterfeit, the law was observed. After he got the land he was under no
necessity of doing anything more than hold on to it, which same he could
do equally well, whether in Chicago or buried in the depths of
Kamschatka. If he chose, he could get chronically drunk; he could
gamble, or drone in laziness; he could do anything but work.
Nevertheless, the land and all its values which others created, were his
forever, to enjoy and dispose of as suited his individual pleasure.

This was, and is still, the system. Thoroughly riveted in law, it was
regarded as a rational, beneficent and everlasting fixture of civilized
life--by the beneficiaries. And as these latter happened to be, by
virtue of their possessions, among the real rulers of government, their
conceptions and interests were embodied in law, thought and custom as
the edict of civilization. The whole concurrent institutions of society,
which were but the echo of property interests, pronounced the system
wise and just, and, as a reigning force, do still so proclaim it. In
such a state there was nothing abnormal in any man monopolizing land and
exclusively appropriating its revenues. On the contrary, it was
considered a superior stroke of business, a splendid example of
astuteness. Marshall Field was looked upon as a very sagacious business
man.

FIELD'S REAL ESTATE TRACTS.

Field bought much land when it was of comparatively inconsequential
value, and held on to it with a tenacious grip. In the last years of his
life, his revenues from