Those who assail private ownership of land say that “the man who makes a farm doesn’t make it in the sense that one makes a basket or a chair.” They see clearly that, if they admit that _the pioneer who goes into the wilderness or the swamps and creates a farm, is to be put on the same footing as the man who goes into the woods, gets material and makes a canoe, or a chair or a basket_, it is “farewell world” to their theory about the land. Therefore they say that THE FARM WAS ALREADY THERE, waiting for the farmer. All the farmer had to do was to go there and tickle the soil with a hoe, and it laughed with the harvest. How very absurd! You might just as well say that the willows that bent over the waters of the brook _were baskets waiting for the tardy basketmaker to come and get them_. You might just as well say that the hide on the cow’s back was a pair of ladies’ shoes waiting for the lady to come and fit them to her dainty feet. Must we get rid of our common sense, our practical knowledge, before we can argue a case of this sort? Do not these doctrinaires know that they are denying physical facts, plain everyday experience, when they say that a piece of wild land in the desert, in the swamps, on the mountain side, or in the woody wilderness _is a farm waiting for the farmer_? Sheer nonsense never went further. But they are compelled to this extent because of the necessities of their case. They see at once that if ever they admit my position that _the laborer takes raw materials with which nature supplies him, and out of those raw materials creates something that did not exist before_, then the laborer is entitled to that which his labor creates.