The burdens which these people are staggering under can be easily imagined when it is known that they have been paying interest on mortgages for years that the places would not now sell for, even after they were improved by years of labor and the outlay of much money. In the San Joaquin valley, for instance, there are homesteads by the thousands that will not sell for what they are mortgaged for, and the extraordinary spectacle was witnessed in the city of San Francisco last year of a bank having to close because it could not sell out the valley farmers for the mortgages due it. Of course these farmers obtained money from the bank, and the justice of the bank's claim is not what we are now trying to get at, but to show that if we had the laws that belong to a republic the people would not be the victims of bankers or any one else. Had they been allowed in the first place to take possession of all unimproved land without having to give up the savings of years to some land grabber, whose theft was authorized and sustained by law, and then loaded down with interest obligations, they would have had no more trouble in keeping their land than they would in keeping an arm or a leg. With every one limited to 160 acres there would be so much thrown open to settlement that it would practically wipe out all mortgages on land, for the occupant of mortgaged premises, could give his owner the option of accepting what would be a fair price under the new conditions, and if it were refused then the occupant could simply back his wagon up, put his portables on and drive to some of the Government land nearest to him. And it should not be so difficult to get the fencing and the lumber for the few small buildings that would answer till he could get better, and, once started, his condition would be a steady improvement, the interest he now pays remaining on the premises where it is made. At present there are the usual fences and buildings put up when the land is bought (part down, the rest at 8 per cent.), and these are the only improvements, outside of vine and tree growth, that can be made; the wear of time even cannot be repaired, for the occupant has nothing to spare for repairs or improvements, and even the necessaries of life are a tug, and as to decent clothing for himself and wife and other dependants that is not to be thought of while he is loaded down with that bane of modern life, interest obligations.