Community Civics and Rural Life

by Arthur William Dunn

CHAPTER XVI

PROTECTION OF PROPERTY AND PROPERTY RIGHTS

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY

There is nothing more discouraging than to have the product of one's labor swept away by disaster. The farmer who has every prospect of a bumper crop after a hard season's work may have his hope dashed by smut in his grain, or by a visitation of grasshoppers, or by storm and flood. Cholera may carry off his hogs, or hoof-and-mouth disease his cattle. Rats and other rodents may eat his grain. Fire may destroy his barn or his home. The thief may steal his pocketbook or his automobile. His investments may prove unfortunate, or be swept away by somebody's bad management or fraud. Some thoughtless boys or deliberate vandals may ruin in a few minutes a beautiful lawn or trees that have taken years to grow and have involved great expense and effort.

THE NATIONAL LOSS FROM PROPERTY DESTRUCTION

The individual's loss is also a loss to the community. It is reported by the Department of Agriculture that nearly $800,000,000 damage was done to crops by insects in a single year. Animal diseases cause a direct loss to our country estimated at $212,000,000 annually. Hog cholera alone costs $75,000,000 a year. Smut destroys more than $50,000,000 a year in cereals. Food and feed products to the value of $150,000,000 a year are destroyed by prairie dogs, ground squirrels, and other rodents. It is said that prairie dogs often take half the pasturage of western cattle ranges. It is estimated that the killing of wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, and lynxes saved more than $2,000,000 worth of livestock in 1918. Floods have destroyed $100,000,000 in property in the Mississippi Valley alone.

The loss from fire in the United States is said to equal the value of our total product of gold, silver, copper, and petroleum.

The buildings consumed by fire in 1914, if placed on lots of 65 feet frontage, would line both sides of a street extending from New York to Chicago. A person journeying along this street of desolation would pass in every thousand feet a ruin from which an injured person was taken. At every three fourths of a mile in this journey he would encounter the charred remains of a human being who has been burned to death. [Footnote: "The Fire Tax and Waste of Structural Materials in the United States," Bulletin 814, U. S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior.]

THE SERVICE OF GOVERMENT

Protection against loss of property is one of the chief services performed for us by our government. We have already noted in Chapter XII what a great deal of work both the national and state governments are doing to prevent loss of crops and of livestock from disease, insects, and other causes. What this may mean to the individual farmer and to the country is suggested by the case of a farmer who had hundreds of acres of corn destroyed in some manner unknown to him. A single visit from a representative of the Department of Agriculture showed him the cause of the trouble, the corn rootworm, and how it could be eradicated by a simple rotation of crops. The farmer said that this knowledge would save him $10,000 a year.

LEADERSHIP AND COOPERATION

The state and national governments spend a great deal of money in equipping experimental laboratories and employing scientists to seek out these enemies of the farmer and of the nation, to find methods of destroying them or counteracting their effects, and to advise the farmer how he may protect himself and his neighbors. While the government provides leadership in these matters, it depends upon the cooperation of the people to get results, as we have seen in so many cases. A farmer may destroy all the rats, or ground squirrels, or prairie dogs on his place, but the trouble will be repeated unless there is community cooperation. The same thing is true of animal and plant diseases, insect enemies, and so on.

Investigate and report on:

Further facts regarding losses to farmers of the United States due to insect and bird enemies, predatory animals, animal and plant diseases.

Similar losses in your own state.

Estimated losses of individual farmers in your locality from any of these causes.

The value of insect-eating birds as property savers.

Campaigns against rabbits and prairie dogs in the West.

Bounties on wolves and other predatory animals in your state.

The work of your state experiment station to prevent loss of property.

NATIONAL COOPERATION FOR FLOOD PREVENTION

Some kinds of protection require effort beyond the powers of individual citizens, or even of combined citizen action. This is the case with flood protection. Millions of dollars in property have been destroyed, thousands of lives lost, and untold suffering caused by the periodic recurrence of floods in certain sections of the country, as in the lower Mississippi Valley, or as in Ohio, a few years ago. The individual farmer has some responsibility for such floods, because by looking after his own drainage and preserving his own timberland he may help decrease the amount of water that flows into the streams and ultimately causes such havoc farther down the valley. But such efforts are helpful only in connection, with the larger efforts of the government. Even state governments cannot alone control the floods, because the waters that cause damage in Louisiana and Mississippi come from the states along the entire course of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Moreover, the destruction caused in Louisiana or any other state is a loss to the entire nation. The control of floods requires the combined efforts of national and state governments, as well as of local communities and individuals.

Levees have been built along some of our rivers that are subject to flood, notably the lower Mississippi, where the work has been done by the joint action of the states affected, through their local levee boards and their state boards of engineers, and the United States Mississippi River Commission. The United States government has spent large sums for river improvements, but there is a general feeling that the money has not always been wisely spent. At all events the work has been restricted to navigable streams under the power of the national government to regulate interstate commerce. Recently, however, the President has approved a law passed by Congress appropriating $45,000,000 for the control of the floods of the Mississippi by improvements from the headwaters of the river to the mouth of the Ohio. The law also includes the appropriation of $5,000,000 for the protection of the Sacramento Valley in California. This law was passed under the power given to Congress by the Constitution "to lay and collect taxes…for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (Art. I, sec. 8, clause i).

WORK OF THE UNITED STATES WEATHER BUREAU

Great saving of property has been effected by the United States Weather Bureau. The work of this Bureau is wonderful, but it is not mysterious. Just as the movements of a ship or of a railroad train may be reported day by day, and hour by hour, by telegraph, so the appearance and movement of a storm center or of a cold wave or of a flood are reported from a multitude of observing stations. There are central weather-forecasting stations at Chicago, New Orleans, Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C. Weather forecasts are made up at these points from observations telegraphed in from observing stations, and within two hours are telegraphed to about 1600 distributing stations, from which they are further distributed to about 90,000 mail addresses daily, to all newspapers, and are made available to 5,500,00 x3 telephone subscribers. A farmer may call central by telephone and learn with remarkable certainty what the weather for twenty-four hours will be, except in the case of local thunder showers which may drench his fields while passing by those of his neighbor.

"It may be said without exaggeration that the San Francisco office of the Weather Bureau has saved to the citrus fruit growers of California more money within the last five years than the annual appropriation for the entire Bureau during a period of twenty years." "In the citrus fruit districts of California it is reported that fruit to the value of $14,000,000 was saved… during one cold wave." "The value of the orange bloom, vegetables, and strawberries protected and saved on a single night in a limited district in Florida…was reported at over $100,000." "The warnings issued for a single cold wave… resulted in saving over $3,500,000 through the protection of property." "Signals displayed for a single hurricane are known to have detained in port on our Atlantic coast vessels valued with their cargoes at over $30,000,000." Flood warnings are sent in from about 60 centers along our rivers, enabling farmers to remove their cattle from bottom lands, to save their crops when they are ready for cutting, and otherwise to determine their farming operations. They are also of the greatest service to railroads, business men, and home owners, in cities. These are but a few illustrations of the services performed by the Weather Bureau.

Investigate and report on:

The building of levees in your state. Where, by whom, their value.

The amount of money spent in your state for river improvement (or harbor improvement).

How the Weather Bureau forecasts the weather, storms, floods.

How to read a weather map.

Experiences of individual farmers of their locality with regard to benefits derived from the Weather Bureau.

How a merchant in your town may be benefited by the Weather
Bureau.

The losses in your state and locale from frost.

Preventable Losses

A great deal of the property loss referred to is due to causes for which we are not responsible, such as storms, the depredations of insects, and epidemics of animal disease. But some of it is due to our own carelessness. It was said on page 176 that wastefulness is our chief national sin. Carelessness is the twin sister of wastefulness; they go hand in hand. Enormous waste is caused by fire, and most fires are due to carelessness—carelessness in handling matches, in the use of oil stoves, in accumulations of rubbish, in disposing of hot ashes, in smoking where there are inflammable materials.

Fire Protection in Cities

In cities and towns the safety of our own property from fire is largely dependent upon the care of others. If our neighbor is careless, our property as well as his may be destroyed. Under such circumstances it is necessary to have rules to regulate conduct for the common safety. The materials with which we may build, the thickness of our walls, the construction of our flues, the storage of explosive or inflammable materials, the disposal of rubbish and ashes, and many other things, are regulated by law. This is cooperation for fire prevention. Much money is also spent by cities for fire protection, including water supply and organized fire departments.

FIRE PROTECTION IN RURAL COMMUNITIES

Where people live widely separated from one another, as in rural communities, such regulations are less necessary and organized fire protection is less easy to afford. A farmer's property may be destroyed by fire from a spark from a passing locomotive, or from the camp of a careless hunter in the adjoining woods. There may be state laws to control such cases. But in the main, if his property burns it is due to the carelessness of some one who lives on the premises, and he is dependent upon his own efforts to control the fire. Improved farm water supply with adequate pumping facilities, the telephone by which neighbors may be summoned, and the automobile by which help may quickly be brought, have increased the farmer's safety; but his chief safeguard is the exercise of care by all who live on the farm at every point where a fire might possibly be started.

FIRE INSURANCE

Fire insurance is a means of reducing the fire loss of individual property owners by a form of cooperation. Insurance companies, operating under state laws, sell insurance to property owners. The latter pay a small premium for the protection afforded. From the funds produced by the premiums and the interest on their investment, the occasional losses of individuals are paid. This does not prevent the destruction of the property, but it distributes the loss among thousands of people, perhaps in all parts of the country.

FARMERS' COOPERATIVE INSURANCE

There are in the United States about 2000 FARMERS' COOPERATIVE FIRE INSURANCE COMPANIES, carrying insurance amounting to more than 5 billion dollars. These companies are associations of farmers who elect their own directors and manage their own insurance business. They provide insurance at a much lower rate than the ordinary commercial insurance companies. A usual provision of the laws under which these cooperative companies operate is that no member may insure his property for its full value. His neighbors will help him bear his loss, but will not bear it all. This has the effect of causing him to exercise greater care to prevent fire on his premises. For this reason insurance does reduce the actual fire loss to some extent. Property may also be insured against loss from storm and flood.

Investigate and report on:

Fire losses in your community in a year.

Causes of fires in your community last year. Number that were preventable.

Precautions against fire in your home and school.

Fire preventive regulations in your community.

Cost of fire prevention in your community.

Improved means of fire prevention in country districts.

How fire insurance works.

Cooperative fire insurance companies in your state.

Storm insurance in your locality.

POLICE PROTECTION

All states have laws to protect their citizens against the "ill- mannered" who do not respect property rights—thieves, burglars, highwaymen, vandals, sharpers, and others. The enforcement of these laws is left largely in the hands of local community officers. Cities have police departments, with large numbers of patrolmen and detectives whose business it is not only to arrest violators of the law after the violation has taken place, but also by their vigilance to prevent the violation from occurring.

RURAL POLICE PROTECTION

The state laws against the violation of property rights apply to rural communities as well as to cities, and rural communities have officers for their enforcement—the constable in townships, the sheriff and his deputies in counties. Where the population is small and widely scattered, as in a rural township or county, about all the officers can do is to arrest law violators after the commission of the unlawful act, if they can be found. The officers are too few to watch isolated and remote property, and in case of serious disturbance, such as a riot, they are too few to handle the situation effectively. Rural communities and many small industrial or mining communities do not always have the protection they need against lawlessness. In such cases the tendency is sometimes for the people to "take the law in their own hands." In times of labor trouble mining companies and other industrial corporations have sometimes organized their own police. Such practice is dangerous, for the enforcement of law should be in the hands of the state, and not in the hands of an interested party. In early days on the frontier, in mining and lumber camps, "vigilance committees" were common; and even now, in various localities, we hear too frequently of "lynching parties," which are as lawless as the original offenders against the law, and tend to create a disrespect for law.

And yet disrespect for law may also result from failure on the part of the community to enforce the law through regular agencies, from failure of officers to apprehend offenders promptly, or of courts to mete out justice promptly and impartially.

STATE POLICE Canada has been more efficient than the United States in affording protection to remote and rural communities, by means of her national mounted police. "The isolated farmer and his wife slept securely in their sod hovel beyond the frontier, because they knew that a brave and swift corps of vigilant young athletes … kept sleepless vigil. Life and property were secure … ." [Footnote: C.R. Henderson, "Rural Police," ANNALS American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1912, p. 228.] In our own country Texas has her "rangers" who protect her borders against raids; but the best example of rural policing in the United States is in Pennsylvania, where there is a well-organized state police, or "constabulary," which has many times proved its efficiency in protecting remote rural communities and homes, in bringing criminals to justice, and in quelling riots in mining centers.

VANDALISM

A great deal of property is destroyed or injured by VANDALS. The original Vandals were a tribe of Germanic peoples who invaded southern and western Europe in the Middle Ages, and who were noted for their destructiveness of the beautiful buildings and other evidences of Roman civilization. There seem to be vandals in almost every community, and sometimes they seem to be especially numerous in small communities, perhaps because of the lack of police protection. Sometimes vandalism is wanton,—that is, it results from an apparent love of being destructive. Most often it is purely thoughtless. Few people would knowingly injure the property of another if they would stop to think of their feelings if another should injure THEIR property. It is a case of "bad manners." Moreover, it is not a "square deal" to injure another's property while expecting one's own property to be secure. When vandalism occurs in a community it creates a general feeling of insecurity and destroys the sense of freedom.

PUBLIC PROPERTY is often more likely to suffer from vandalism than private property. Some people will mar the walls of public buildings, or make their floors filthy with expectoration, when they would not think of doing so in private buildings. They will break shrubbery in public parks, or despoil public flower beds, when they would not think of entering private premises for such purpose. There seems to be a feeling that public property belongs to no one, or else that, since it is public, any one is at liberty to do as he pleases with it. This, of course, is foolish. It is as if a stockholder in a business corporation should injure or destroy the corporation property, forgetting that he owned a share in it and suffered a share of the loss.

Investigate and report on:

Organization of police protection in your community.

Organization of a police department in a large city.

The Mounted Police of Canada and their work.

The Texas rangers.

The state police of Pennsylvania.

Vigilance committees in frontier towns of former times.

Why lynching is wrong.

The promptness with which justice is meted out in the courts of your state.

The extent and causes of vandalism in your community.

Is vandalism justifiable on Halloween?

Inspect the courthouse and other public buildings in your community and report as to whether they are disfigured in any way.

THE SACREDNESS OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

When a thief or vandal takes or destroys another person's property, the loss of the property is not the worst thing that happens, but the attack upon PROPERTY RIGHTS. The right to security in one's possessions is among the most sacred rights of a free people, being classed with the right to life, the right of free speech, the right of petition, the right to freedom of religion. It is by securing these rights that the law makes us free. The sacred right to property is as truly violated by one who steals a nickel as by one who robs a bank of a thousand dollars, by one who ruins our flower bed as well as by one who burns our house. The amount has nothing to do with it. The tax which the English government imposed on tea imported by the American colonists was not a heavy tax, but the colonists objected because it was imposed without their consent.

CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES OF PROPERTY RIGHTS

The citizens of a free country require protection of their property rights against infringement by their government as well as by one another. The Revolutionary War was fought in defense of this and other rights against violation by the English government. When the Constitution of the United States was framed, the people refused to ratify it unless amendments were added guaranteeing these rights. Thus it was provided that "no soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law" (Amendment III); that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated …" (Amendment IV); that "no persons shall be … deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation" (Amendment V. See also Chapter XIV, p. 207). The Constitution also provides that "no state shall … pass any … law impairing the obligation of contracts" (Art. I, sec. 10, clause I), and in various other ways protects our property rights. Our state constitutions contain many similar provisions. Our governments have the power to take property in the form of taxes, but under certain restrictions imposed by our constitutions to safeguard the rights of the people (see Chapter XXIII).

OUR NATIONAL ARMY

It is to protect these RIGHTS, rather than property itself, that communities have their police, that states have their militia, and that the nation has its army and its navy. Among the chief causes that led us into war with Germany was the fact that Germany was violating the property rights of our citizens. While our Constitution provides for state militia and a national army for the defense of our rights, property rights included, it has always been our national policy to maintain as small a standing army as is consistent with the national safety; and this for the very reason that a large standing army and a large navy are not only a great burden of expense, but also, as the founders of our nation believed, a menace to the liberties of the people and to the peace of the world.

THE SERVICE OF THE COURTS

We have seen that no person may be deprived of property by the government "without due process of law." This means that the procedure provided by law must be followed, and that the citizen whose property is taken may have his side of the case presented, the value of the property in question appraised by impartial judges, and so on. It is the business of THE COURTS to see that justice is done. They inquire into the facts in the case, and interpret the law bearing on it. The courts are the final safeguard to our liberties. Our government comprises, therefore, not only a law-making branch and a law-enforcing branch, but also a LAW-INTERPRETING, OR JUDICIAL, branch—the courts.

THE RIGHTS OF ACCUSED PERSONS

The Constitution guarantees justice to persons accused of violating the property rights, or other rights of citizens, by theft, fraud, or otherwise, as well as to the citizen who has been wronged. "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense" (Amendment VI). "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" (Amendment VIII).

Investigate and report on:

How are property rights guaranteed in your state constitution? in the national Constitution?

Read the charges made in the Declaration of Independence against the King of England with respect to the violation of property rights.

"Due process of law."

The violation of property rights by Germany as a cause for war.

Are property rights as sacred in time of war as in time of peace?

What property rights has an American in Mexico?

What property rights has a Mexican in the United States?

What became of German property in the United States during the war?

The purpose of the courts.

What courts exist in your community?

The rights of a person accused of crime.

READINGS

In the Year Book of the Department of Agriculture:

1910, pp. 413-424, Fire prevention and control on the national forests.

1913, pp. 75-92, Bringing applied entomology to the farmer.

1915, pp. 159-172, Animal disease and our food supply.

1915, pp. 263-272, Recent grasshopper outbreaks and methods of control.

1916, pp. 217-226, Suppression of gypsy and brown-tailed moths.

1916, pp. 267-272, Cooperative work for eradicating citrus canker.

1916, pp. 381-398, Destroying rodent pests on the farm.

1918, pp. 303-316, Federal protection of migratory birds.

Farmers' mutual fire insurance, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Bulletin No. 530; also, Year Book, 1916, pp. 421-434.

The Weather Bureau (a pamphlet), Government Printing Office,
Washington. Send to the Weather Bureau for list of publications.

How the Weather Bureau forecasts storms, frosts, and floods, Office of Information, U.S. Department of Agriculture; reprinted in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT, March 14, 1914.

Forecasting storms: the Weather Bureau's helpfulness, SUNSET
MAGAZINE, vol. 25, pp. 529-532 (Nov., 1910).

The Farmer and the Weather Bureau, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Feb. 18, 1911.

Doing business by the weather map, WORLD'S WORK, June, 1914.

Flood control:

Water Supply Paper 234, U.S. Geological Survey, Department of the
Interior, 1919. Write for other publications on this subject.
Also, the Office of the Chief of Engineers, War Department.

There has been much magazine literature on this subject.

War and Navy Departments, in the Federal Executive Departments,
Bulletin, 1919, No. 74, U.S. Bureau of Education.

Dunn, THE COMMUNITY AND THE CITIZEN, chap. X.

Hart, ACTUAL GOVERNMENT, pp. 573-582.