Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the SouthFortune, Timothy Thomas
History
Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South
Fortune, Timothy Thomas
African Americans -- Southern States; Southern States -- Economic conditions; United States -- Race relations
lands have been alienated from the people, while the inferior lands
upon which they are allowed to live will not yield the exorbitant
rental demanded and the necessary subsistence for those who work them.
Hence, Ireland is in a state so explosive that it can only be
appropriately described by the term "dynamitic." In the interest of a
few landlords the whole Irish nation has been demoralized and
impoverished, so that the government of Great Britain finds it
necessary to "_assist_" able-bodied men to reach America, or any other
portion of the world they desire to go to, in order to make a living.
If monopoly in land produces such results as these is it not to be
condemned as subversive of correct social adjustments and the
perpetuity of government? The question admits of but one answer. If
monopoly in land compels a government to "assist" its able-bodied men,
its laborers, its producers of wealth, its soldiery, to go to other
lands, is it not to be condemned as parasitical, destroying the very
bone and sinew of government? The answer is self-evident. If monopoly
in land produces such results as these, would it not be wise
statesmanship and sound governmental policy to confiscate to the
people the millions of acres which avarice, cunning, favoritism and
robbery have turned into parks, pasturages and game preserves--making
the few thousands who constitute the land monopolists, the idlers and
the harpies, go honestly to work to make a living, and giving at the
same time the same opportunity to the great laboring classes, who
earnestly desire to make a living but to whom the opportunity is
cruelly and maliciously denied?
I am opposed to aristocracies and so-called privileged classes,
because they are opposed to the masses. They make inequalities, out of
which grow all the miseries of society, because there is no limit to
their avarice, parsimony and cruelty. So _they_ thrive, _all the rest_
of humanity may go to the dogs; so they revel in luxury and
debauchery, all the rest of humanity may revel in poverty, vice and
crime; so they enjoy all the blessings of organized society, all the
rest of humanity may bear its curses. Man is essentially a selfish
animal. Self-preservation is the very first law which he learns to
observe and to practice. That he may get on top of the social ladder
and remain there, he will sacrifice family, common humanity and
patriotism. Naturally, Moloch-self is the god he serves. To enjoy a
little brief authority, he would enslave universal mankind, and
declare, as Solomon did, after exhausting the catalogue of tyranny and
libertinism, "all is vanity"--emptiness! Thus, it is dangerous to
confide in the humanity of man. To place in his hands a weapon so
all-powerful as land, is to place him upon a pinnacle from whose vast
altitude he can, will, and does crush his unfortunate fellowman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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