To put up the fence was heroic work. To keep it up was just as heroic, for forest fires destroyed it from time to time, and the pioneer had to replace the barrier against the encroachment of animal life and the inroads of savagery with as great a tenacity and as sublime a courage as that of the people of Holland, who tore their country from the clutches of the ocean and barred out the sea with dikes. Tell me, that after the pioneer had created this little paradise of his—rude though it might have been—amidst the terrors and the toils and sacrifices of that life in the wilderness, _it should be taken from him by the first man who coveted it, and who said, “HERE, TAKE YOUR CROP, THAT IS ALL YOU ARE ENTITLED TO: TAKE YOUR CROP AND GIVE ME YOUR FARM!”_ Would that have been _right_, at the time private property was first recognized by our people in Germany? Would that have been right at the time our pioneer farmers in New England and Virginia created their farms, endured difficulties and dangers which make them stand out in heroic outline on the canvas of history? No, by the splendor of God! It would have been robbery and nothing less than robbery for the tribe to have confiscated the farm which the pioneer of America had made—partly with his rifle, partly with his axe, partly with his spade—and throw it into the common lot where the idler and the criminal would have just as much benefit from it as the pioneer _who had made the farm_. As to _the abuse of land ownership_, that is an entirely different question. I agree that there should be no monopoly of land for speculative purposes. The platform of the People’s Party has constantly kept that declaration as a part of its creed. The abuse of land ownership is quite a different thing from land ownership itself. I am not defending any of its abuses. I am simply saying that _the principle_ is sound. All those things which belong to the class of _private utilities_ should be left to private ownership, because I believe in individualism; but all those things which partake of the nature of public utilities should belong to the public.