In the fertile valley of the Sacramento, land that would give one hundred and sixty acre homes to ten thousand families (fifty thousand people) is owned by one hundred individuals, all average of sixteen thousand acres to each owner. This is but a fraction of the valley and leaves out the owners of less than sixteen thousand acres.
In the great San Joaquin valley, the laborer in search of work can walk for days in one direction alongside of fencing that incloses land belonging to one firm. And this immense fortune-in land was obtained by robbery, just as the other millionaire fortunes were obtained.
In the land office we see the miserable tool and his master.
In the legislative halls we see the miserable tool and his master.
And we see the leaves on Liberty's Tree droop and wither as these deadly borers do their work under the bark below.
Up among the peaks and valleys of the Sierra Nevada lies the town of Mariposa, settled by gold seekers whose rich findings gave world wide fame to this hamlet among the mountains. Aluvial gold and quartz bearing gold was scattered with lavish hand through the surrounding hills, and in the beds of the summer-dried streams. Generous laws of their own making, gave ample room, and the eager workers toiled on, forgetting the past hardships of the long journey where so many fell by the way, and the rugged hills became endeared to them as they marked out the shaded spots on their shelving sides where their coming dear ones could look down on the busy scene below. But the camp follower with ready knife never finished the wounded brave quicker than did the "land grant" swindler finish Mariposa when her riches became the theme of every gold camp throughout the world. And to-day the big hearted and stalwart miner goes to fever-laden Africa and ice-bound Alaska, when there are whole mountains of the best mineral bearing land in the world in his own country, but which our present laws forbid him to touch.
Our people should no more bow to a Mexican land grant title than to a superstition of their cave-dwelling ancestors.
What matters it, however, in what way these colossal robberies were committed; by coffee-stained lie from Mexico, or perjured oath of faithless citizen; it has been done, and it is time for the undoing.
Man developed the school house, and for this each is indebted to the other, and the mutual debt is acknowledged by making the school free to all.
The Creator developed the Earth from chaos to the habitable home of man, free to all, but this debt is not acknowledged, and the many are driven into the highway by the few.