Sociology [pp. 303-323]

THE PRINCETON REVIEW.
fers no power or privilege. No one will work for another for
wages when he can take up new land and be his own master.
Hence it will pay no one to own more land than he can cultivate by his own labor, or with such aid as his own family supplies. Hence, again, land bears little or no rent, there will be
no landlords living on rent, and no laborers living on wages,
but only a middle class of yeoman farmers. All are substantially on an equality, and democracy becomes the political form,
because this is the only state of society in which the dogmatic
assumption of equality, on which democracy is based, is realized
,as a fact. The same effects are powerfully re-enforced by other
facts. In a new and under-populated country the industries
-which are most profitable are the extractive industries. The
characteristic of these, with the exception of some kinds of
mining, is that they call for only a low organization of labor and
small amount of capital. Hence they allow the workman to
become speedily his own master, and they educate him to freedom, independence, and self-reliance. At the same time, the
social groups being only vaguely marked off from each other, it
is easy to pass from one class of occupations, and consequently
{rom one social grade, to another. Finally, under the same circumstances, education, skill, and superior training have but
inferior value compared with what they have in densely populated countries. The advantages lie, in an under-populated
country, with the coarser, unskilled, manual occupations, and
not with the highest developments of science, literature, and
art.
If now we turn for comparison to cases of over-population
we see that the struggle for existence and the competition of
life are intense where the pressure of population is great. This
competition draws out the highest achievements. It makes the
advantages of capital, education, talent, skill, and training tell
to the utmost. It draws out the social scale upwards and
downwards to great extremes, and produces aristocratic social
organizations in spite of all dogmas of equality. Landlords,
tenants (i.e., capitalist employers), and laborers are the three
primary divisions of any aristocratic order, and they are sure to
be developed whenever land bears rent, and whenever tillage
requires the application of large capital. At the same time
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