The Spanish and Mexican methods were then in force in what are now Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and other neighboring States. The French system had been applied in the Territory of Louisiana. The English plan had been to give to proprietors huge colonies extending "from sea to sea," with indefinite boundaries, and without much regard to what became of the lands after the central government had thus gotten rid of them; for each colony worked out its own land system. There is a distinct difference between our conduct of our Public Domain and the English conduct of their American colonies which was forcibly brought out by Daniel Webster ninety years ago. After saying that from the origin of the government we had bought out Indian titles and protected the settlers by military force, he continued:

"What English government accompanied our ancestors to clear the forests of a barbarous foe? What treasures of the Exchequer were expended in buying up the original title to the land? What government arm held its ægis over our fathers' heads as they pioneered their way in the wilderness?"

We have constantly kept military reservations and posts at the outskirts of the settled lands to protect the frontier; and our direct and indirect expenses for these purposes have been many times greater than all of the cash returns from the sales of land in the Public Domain.

In Canada the wilderness lands were largely turned over to the Hudson Bay Company and other fur gatherers, who obtained control of immense tracts of land merely by erecting trading posts which dominated navigable rivers and the lanes of commerce. There was no "Westward, Ho!" north of our boundary line until our

progress induced it; but there was a very strong movement in Canada for annexation, because until about fifty years ago there was booming life and growth south of the international line, and a death in life north of it. After the Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867, the Hudson Bay Company offered to sell it practically all of its lands in British Columbia for $500,000, but the Dominion could not accept the offer, and the great cities of that territory have since been built up around the old trading posts of the Hudson Bay Company and on lands belonging to it. Recently this company sold a single tract in one of these cities for about $5,000,000, and no one knows the present value of what it offered to the Dominion for $500,000.

When the United States undertook its land policy, it had no foreign precedents except those of the governments of Spain, Portugal, Louis XIV and George IIIin other words, the world's colonial history to that time. If we would estimate the net success of our governmentfor-the-people land policy, we must measure it against what would have been the present situation if the Public Domain had developed for the past 135 years as English, Spanish, French or Mexican colonies, or by the soviet policy and class hatred system of Prussian Marxism.

We started as national, state and individual bankrupts. Neither we nor any other nation of the time-except possibly Switzerland-had had any experience in government of, by and for the people. None of our public men had had any experience in any independent government; merely in the puppet governments of small colonies which even then had the referendum and recall-but only to and by a European potentate or court official or proprietor.

The United States might have had British Columbia for the taking, but our Secretary of State, Daniel Web

ster, refused to acquire this territory because it was simply "a breeding place for grizzly bears." Seward bought Alaska, in 1867, for $7,000,000, merely because the acquisition would oust Russia and Russian influence from this continent. It was only a larger application of the Monroe Doctrine.

Therefore, in the light of the conditions, theories and practice of the world prior to July 4, 1776, we may honestly say that, even with all its shortcomings, government for the people, applied through government of and by the people, has been the wonder of the world when used in developing the Public Domain of the United States. It was never a money-making scheme for the nation; but rather an expensive experiment in applying the purposive functions of the government on a vaster scale than history had ever known before or is likely to know again. It was indeed a "Land Office business"; the biggest thing that our forefathers could conceive of.

From this point on, in studying the wonderful evolution and expansion of our purposive government, we must keep constantly in mind the fact that the United States and most of its States have been the greatest land owning, land selling and land developing corporations in the world. Consequently the very history and development of the nation and States have been largely the outcome of and founded upon their necessities as land owners and sellers. Only thus can we understand our government aid, ownership, operation or control of roads, bridges, canals, railroads, coach lines, telephone and telegraph lines, and our other startling departures from the decentralizing traditions of our English ancestry. Our political course has not been so much governed by a political theory as by the fact that the most important assets of our governments were their lands; and the most impor

tant class of their inhabitants were the persons to whom they had sold lands. The development of a great progressive and beneficent public land policy does not belong to the constitutional or conductive functions of a government, but to its purposive. Because our purposive land policy affected every part of our national life, the purposive functions of our government have bulked larger than those of any other nation, and have even been greater and more widespread than those of all the rest of the world.

It is apparent, and as we progress will become selfevident, that Marxism, with its exaggerated dominance of the state which is to be dominated by an exaggerated dictatorship of the proletariat, could never have solved the novel problems which have swarmed upon us since 1776.

X

CHANGES IN THE POST OFFICE PRODUCED BY GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE

I

T is not claimed that the post office or postal service originated under our government for the people.

There has been something like a postal service since the beginning of history. It is spoken of among the Persians, Chinese and Peruvians; but the first postal operations were strictly for the potentate and not for the people. Large empires required a sure and reliable means of sending out their mandates, of communicating with public officials and of ascertaining what was going on in all parts of the empire. Thus, as there were no railroads or telegraphs in those days and as armies had to be moved, it became necessary to establish post roads and post routes for government use, and train trustworthy runners or riders to cover the routes. In a few instances the privileges of the post were extended to important private interests which had become worth bleeding or strong enough to need watching. Sometimes the postal service was farmed out to favorites or to those who would agree to pay a fixed sum for its privileges. But these were money making propositions for the government and not primarily to secure the blessings of liberty to the people; and the service was extended only where it would pay for itself. It did not take in the lean with the fat, and therefore covered chiefly the principal avenues of commerce and certain privileged classes of society.