American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
always been so. The result has not been wholly due, as one is
apt to think, to the existence of vast tracts of unoccupied land "at
the West," whatever that phrase may at the time have meant,
whether western New York in I 8 io, or Ohio in I 830, or Iowa in
1850, or Dacotah in I88o. An aristocratic holding of land in New
England would have been quite as consistent with a great breadth
of free lands across the Missouri as is such a holding of land in
England consistent with the existence of boundless fertile tracts
in Canada and Australia under the laws of the same empire.
The result in the United States has been due partly to the
fact just noted, combined with the liberal policy of the government relative to the public domain; partly to excellent laws
for the registration of titles and the transfer of real property in
nearly every State of the Union; and partly to the genius of our
people, their readiness to buy or to sell, to go east or to go west,
as a profit may appear.
But while we have thus enjoyed a highly popular tenure of
the soil, this has not been obtained by the force of laws compelling the subdivision of estates, as in France, under the law
of "partible succession;"' nor has it been carried so far as to
create a dull uniformity of petty holdings. If, as Prof. Roscher
remarks, "a mingling of large, medium, and small properties, in
which those of medium size predominate, is the most wholesome of political and economical organizations," the United
States may claim to have the most favorable tenure of the soil
among all the nations of earth. We have millions of farms just
large enough to profitably employ the labor of the proprietor
and his growing sons; while we have, also, multitudes of considerable estates upon which labor and moneyed capital, live-stock
and improved machinery are employed under skilled direction;
and we have, lastly, those vast farms, the wonder of the world,
in Illinois and California, where I0oo or 500ooo acres are sown as
one field of wheat or corn, or, as on the Dalrymple Farms in Da
I A strong reaction is manifest in France against the requirement of the code
that all estates must, at the death of the proprietor, be equally divided among all
the children. It is objected to as causing the subdivision of the land into patches
too small for profitable cultivation, and as breaking up commercial and manufacturing establishments, rendering it a rare thing that a son should succeed his father
in his business.
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