OUR FOREIGN ELEMENT. 441 States and Territories are of foreign birth; 47 per cent. born of foreign parents, over one half having foreign father or mother. Of these, California has about 38 per cent. of foreign birth, 52 per cent. born of foreign parents, and 58 per cent. having a foreign father or mother; Nevada, 60 per cent. ditto; Oregon, 22 per cent.; Washington Territory, 36 per cent.; Utah, 70 per cent.; Wisconsin, 71 per cent.; Minnesota, 66 per cent. The wonderful advancement of the latter States, in material wealth and social progress, furnishes conclusive evidence of the value of immigration. The value of immigrants as creators of wealth depends upon their intelligence and skill. In a company of 8,000, from nearly every nationality in the north of Europe, was found 230 farmers, 1,346 laborers, 81 carpenters, 26 joiners, 12 masons, 41 painters, 12 blacksmiths, 10 clergymen, 34 clerks, 8 gas-fitters, 14 plumbers, 10 printers, 120 seamen, 39 shoe-makers, 7 spinners, 8 tailors, 4 teachers, 9 tinsmiths, 16 weavers, 21 seamstresses, 21 dress-makers, 4 tailoresses, 4 nurses and 1 book-binder, besides 480 female servants, with 785 males and 3,000 females without special occupations. The Pacific coast offers the richest field for the immigrant. It has room for whole colonies in its nooks and corners; while millions of acres wait to be reclaimed and converted into homes for a teeming population. By some coöperative system, immigrants could pay for these lands in labor employed in the construction of levees. The same is true of large tracts of land in the interior and southern portions of the State, where canals and irrigating ditches will be required. The community and village systems of farming, which is carried out in some of the European States, is likely to be imitated here, as it has already been at Anaheim, in Los Angeles county, and in the older sectarian colonies of Pennsylvania. All things considered, Vineland is perhaps the most signal success in drawing off the over-crowded population of cities, and setting them at work upon the land; and it is unquestionably the most prosperous community in the United States. The site fixed upon by the projector of Vineland, Mr. C. K. Landis, was a spot about thirty-five miles from Philadelphia, known as the New Jersey Barrens, owned by one of the railroads, and valued at $5 per acre. It was a rolling sand prairie, so light and thin that without summer rains it would have been blown away centuries ago. Small scrub pines and oaks covered it; very little of it had ever been cultivated; from its unpastured wastes only checker-berries and bunches of trailing arbutus came into the Philadelphia market in early spring. Now, California cannot outvie in size and quality the fruit shows from Vineland, to be seen daily on Market street, the luscious strawberries, peaches, melons—or the fresh vegetables. When Mr. Landis bought his 16,000 acres of the railroad company and set himself to laying out a town, the Chester county farmers laughed in their sleeves. The place could be abundantly watered, but "all the manure in the State of Pennsylvania" was apparently necessary to ensure its productiveness. There was much speculation as to whether it was not merely a dodge of the railroad to raise money on worthless land, from people whose eye-teeth had never been cut. He The site of the town was central on the track, thirty-four miles from Philadelphia, and was laid out in lots of from one to four acres. Outside the limits it was divided into plats of from ten to fifty acres, according to the distance. Mr. Landis for years never raised on his original price-$25 per acre. gave credit for two thirds of the purchase-money-obtained a "no fence law" for the entire domain-made a few excellent roads, and settlers began to appear. The terms of the sale included an agreement to put up a dwelling house within a year, at a certain distance from the street; to plant shade trees on the borders; to clear and put in tillage a certain proportion, and the keeping of a strip of roadside neatly laid down to grass. The streets were thus made boulevards from the beginning, to which each year will give additional beauty. These street improvements were to be perpetually maintained, if neglected by individuals, at the cost of the property owners, and only live fences were used. Speculation in uncultivated lands, which has been the bane of other settlements, never has occurred in Vineland, the advance in value invariably being upon the improvements of actual settlers, whether permanent or otherwise. Four cardinal principles were subscribed to by every purchaser, which Mr. Landis had laid down for his own guidance: 1. No land to be sold to speculators, but to persons agreeing to improve in a certain time and way. 2. No fences to be required. VINELAND A MODEL COLONY. 443 3. The public sale of intoxicating drinks-should be prohibited, by an annual vote of the people. 4. The maintenance of the best schools. In a speech before the Legislature of New Jersey last year, Mr. Landis says his temperance regulation was made, not from philanthropy, "but simply from the conviction of its importance to the success of the colony. I was not a temperance man myself," he says, "in the total abstinence sense of the term. In conversation with the settlers, I never treated the subject of liquor-selling as a moral question-probably not one tenth of the voters of Vineland are total abstinence men. The law has been practically in operation since 1861, though the Vineland local option law did not pass till 1863. The vote has always stood against license by an overwhelming majority, there being generally from two to nine votes in favor of liquor-selling. In twelve years there was a population of eleven thousand, mostly from New England. Fourteen thousand, and within the last year, twenty-three thousand acres have been added to the original tract. This colony was started just at the commencement of the civil war, and has paid sixty thousand dollars of the debt, besides sending its quota to the field. It has built one hundred and seventy-eight miles of excellent roads, twenty school-houses, ten churches, four post-offices, fifteen manufacturing establishments, besides shops and stores, such as would be required by a similar population elsewhere. In the importance of its agricultural productions Landis township ranks the fourth in New Jersey. There are seventeen miles of railways on the tract, and six stations. If any one would know whether temperance and education are sufficient safeguards against crime, let him read the statistics of the police and poor expenses of this settlement for the last six years: The sheriff of Vineland says, the poor-tax in the township amounts to five cents per annum for each inhabitant, the police expenses to half a cent! Have we not here a possible solution of the problem which has vexed many a lover of his kind, viz., how to preserve intact the sanctity of the individual home, while securing the fullest advantages of social union? The Greeley colony in Colorado furnishes another proof of the entire practicability of carrying out the colonial plan without requiring a religious or sectarian qualification for membership. “The social and political problem is the incorporation of the entire population into society;" it is the mission of the Patrons to aid in this, by creating a true social spirit among the great class of laborers to which they belong. Leaving Roman luxury and Roman licentiousness to nations in their childhood or their dotage, we believe there is a higher relation than that of landlord and tenant, viz., the relation of founder and partner, and that capital and culture, as well as labor, will only reach their highest uses in helping men to live nobly, simply and peacefully with each other. In the forming of new colonies the last will be first in respect to results, for it can avoid the mistakes and profit by the experiences of the rest. A diversity of employments should be aimed at in the community and for the individual; not for regular business, perhaps, but to multiply resources in case of need, and because this brings out and utilizes all the faculty of the community. The agricultural communities of the future, whether separately organized or not, will undoubtedly be less sectarian in religion, less partisan in politics, less contracted by traditions and habits of nation or race. An honorable and emulous class interest will be their distinguishing characteristic; they, with all the other great classes of laboring men, will "lay the foundations of an everlasting commonwealth, whose power shall be manhood; whose organization, a model State; whose spirit, religion; whose weapon, suffrage; whose conservatism, education; whose objects are freedom of industry as well as of opinion, order, economy and peace within the State, and an eternal brotherhood with those who are our wider neighbors." THE GRANGER'S POLITICS. 445 CHAPTER XXXII. SELECTED POETRY FOR THE GRANGE. THE GRANGER'S POLITICS. The word of the Lord by night, As they sat by the sea-side, And filled their hearts with flame.. God said, I am tired of kings, Up to my ear the morning brings Think ye I made this ball A field of havoc and war, Where tyrants great and tyrants small My angel, his name is Freedom, Lo! I uncover the land Which I hid of old time in the west, I will divide my goods; Call in the wretch and slave; I will have never a noble, No lineage counted great; Go cut down trees in the forest, Cut down trees in the forest, And build me a wooden house. Call the people together; The young men and the sires, *From the Ode, and Boston Hymn.-By R. W. Emerson. |