large tracts on lease from the state at prices determined periodically by appraisement fixed in proportion to the needs of the state. Lands taken on these terms were guaranteed to be kept free from the competition of squatters, so that the lands remaining vacant were cleared of squatters, or else the latter were restricted to a mere garden patch. Thus the country was no longer occupied by farmers residing on the lands with their families as in former times. The agricultural districts were inhabited only by a poor and thriftless class of peasants and during the summers by the employes of the large contract farmers who made their headquarters and resided with their families in the cities. In the winter, only such hands as were required to care for the stock remained in the country, the rest all flocking to the towns. “One result of the increased rentals charged for the agricultural lands appears not to have been anticipated. That was the great rise in the cost of food. Of course the rents of the lands were simply added to the cost of the production of grain and other foods, and finally were paid by the consumer. It came to be seen after a time that the public revenues raised out of the agricultural lands were finally paid by all the people in proportion—not to their wealth or ability, but to their appetites and the amount they consumed—so that a laboring man with a vigorous appetite paid more to support the state than a dyspeptic millionaire. And a poor man’s family of six or eight ravenous offspring contributed many times as much as the scanty and sickly progeny of the exclusive aristocrat. It speedily became a cause of great dissatisfaction and disappointment when the poor and the working classes found out that the fine promises of the single tax had so far failed that instead of lightening their burdens it had increased them. And that the confiscation of the lands of the farmers instead of adding to the prosperity of the common people had increased the already plethoric wealth of the rich. A school of politicians now arose who declared that the taxation of land was the taxation of the poor man’s bread and butter and was all wrong. Instead of farming land paying the bulk of the taxes they said it ought not to pay any. Every facility and encouragement ought to be given for the production of cheap food. People ought not to be taxed on what they consume, but on what they save. Neither labor nor the laborer should be taxed, they should be made as free and unhampered as possible for the production of wealth. But when wealth was once produced then it should be taxed wherever found and a necessary portion of it taken as the revenue of the state. The laboring classes were in a mood to listen to this logic whether sound or not. The lands having passed out of private hands, however, there was no disposition to allow them to pass back to them again. And the new party advocated state superintendence of the lands and free occupancy by