I've seen this place from the side of the road quite a few times, although its in a remote location. It wasn't until earlier this fall that I realized that it's all on Federal Land.
I walked in, as you have to do, while hunting doves. I only saw one.
It's a full homestead. Barns, outbuildings, and a substantial house. This is very unusual as a lot of work went into this, but for some reason, it wasn't proved up. I'll have to see if I can figure out the history of it. So far I've had no luck.
It was well thought out, and sheltered. A substantial hay field, on Federal Land, worked by the current leaseholder remains. What's really surprising, however, is the house. It was very well built. So much so, that for a time I debated it if was a school, but it was better built than rural schools by quite some margin, and frankly larger. It's a house.
Usually, although not always, when you walk up on an abandoned homestead, they're on private, not Federal, land. And that makes sense. It only took five years to prove up a homestead, and proving it up was one of the first things the people eligible to do so did. It protected their investment, which was substantial, both in terms of time and labor, but moreover in actual cash outlays, which were actually quite a bit more extensive than people imagine.
The peak year for homesteading was 1913, during which 11,000,000 acres were claimed. I"m a bit surprised by that, as I thought it was 1914. World War One caused a massive boom in homesteading which was aided by the weather. A lot of people took up dry land farming in that period, following the naive popular assertion of the time that "rain follows the plow.
Abandoned wagon.
It doesn't.
A large part of what inspired homesteading entries at the time was the Great War. With Imperial Russia off of the farming export market, which was a huge portion of its GNP at the time, and with European farming massively impacted by the war, grain production, beef production, and horse production turned to the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Trouble began to set in after the war, although interestingly not immediately so. 1919 was the last year that American farmers had economic parity with those who lived in municipalities. That started changing soon thereafter, however, and its never reversed. The Agricultural Depression of the 1920s set in early in the 1920s, and basically carried on until the Great Depression hit in 1929. Having said that, people continued to attempt to file homestead entries, some people naively believing that if they couldn't make it in town, they could as a farmer or rancher.
The buildings on this spread, however, are too nice to be a late homestead entry. I've seen a few comparable ones that were abandoned, but they were all earlier homesteads in which the owners became over extended and couldn't make their bank payments during the Great Depression. A lot of money went into some houses and whatnot while things were going well. That must have been the case here. So what happened?
That is, at least right now, impossible for me to say. But what seems clear is that a lot of money went into this spread during good times, and the owners pulled out when hard times hit. That, and the fact that the abandoned equipment is horse, not vehicle, drawn would suggest that the homesteaders were doing okay during World War One but didn't weather the change in the economic climate of the Agricultural Depression of the 1920s. If I had my guess, this was probably a World War One vintage homestead which collapsed, after a huge investment of time, effort and money, soon after the war.
They didn't last long enough in order to prove up.
Their dreams must have been crushed. I hope, and pray, that the rest of their lives went well.
I'd also note that, more than ever before, when I see places like this I have a maudlin tinge of regret. My dream was something like this too. At age 62, I won't make it.
Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior: Having recently delved into laws of history; we now, without proper qualification or training, delve into sociology. Well, maybe we actual...
Yeoman's Twenty-third Law of Behavior: "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly" Oliver Bullough.
Certain societies worship wealth, but this rule is invariably true, although there are plenty of individual exceptions.
Wealth corrupts, it simply does. The New Testament councils that "Love of money is the root of all evil", and while some people acquire vast wealth simply because they love work, quite often it's mixed in with the love of money. Beyond that, money at some point both blinds people to the consequences of their own actions, and to the realities of that.
The corruption of money keeps people working in positions they should yield to younger people who are kept from moving up, and therefore kept at a fiscal and societal disadvantage. It leads to the destruction of land, people, and the environment. And big money nearly invariably brings in extra corruption on a personal level.
Big money attracts sycophants who assure the wealthy person that his actions are benign, or that he's smart, and deserves to be the exception to the rule. It reduces people to objects, and allows people to believe that their personal destruction of others is merited.
“No one can serve two masters.m He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Matthew, Chapter 6.
I was going to use the work "revolution", but didn't as I don't want it suggested that I mean an armed revolution. I'm not. Indeed, I'm not keen on violence in general, and as I intend to refer to the American Revolution in this essay, I'll note that had I lived in the 1770s, I'd have been genuinely horrified by events. I highly doubt that I would have joined the "Patriots" and likewise I wouldn't have joined the Loyalist either. I'd have been in the 1/3d that sat the war out with out choosing sides, but distressed by the overall nature of it.
Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State. The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.
Oligarchy is now where we are at.
I've been thinking about it, and Dr. Jones has really hit on something. The nature of Americanism, if you will, is in fact not its documentary artifacts and (damaged) institutions, it is, rather, in what it was. At the time of the American Revolution the country had an agrarian/distributist culture and that explained, and explains, everything about it.
The Revolution itself was fought against a society that had concentrated oligarchical wealth. To more than a little degree, colonist to British North America had emigrated to escape that.
We've been losing that for some time. Well over a century, in fact, and indeed dating back into the 19th Century. It started accelerating in the mid 20th Century and now, even though most do not realize it, we are a full blown oligarchy.
Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.
Aristotle, Politics.
Corporations were largely illegal in early American history. They existed, but were highly restricted. The opposite is the case now, with corporations' "personhood" being so protected by the law that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political spending is a form of free speech and corporations can spend unlimited money on independent political broadcasts in candidate elections. This has created a situation in which corporations have gobbled up local retail in the US and converted middle class shopkeeping families into serfs. It's also made individual heads of corporations obscenely, and I used that word decidedly, wealthy.
Wealth on the level demonstrated by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump simply should not exist. It's bad for average people and its corrupting of their souls. That corruption can be seen in their unhinged desire for self aggrandizement and acquisition. Elon Must acquires young white women of a certain type for concubinage Donald Trump, whose money is rooted in the occupation of land, has collected bedmates over the years, "marrying" some of them and in his declining mental state, seeks to demonstrated his value through grotesque molestation of public property.
Those are individual examples of course, but the government we currently have, while supported by the Puritan class, disturbingly features men of vast wealth, getting wealthier, with a government that operates to fork over more money to those who already have it. The MAGA masses, which stand to grow poorer, and in the case of the agricultural sector are very much already suffering that fate, deservedly after supporting Trump, continue to believe that the demented fool knows what he's doing.
I don't know the source of this, but this illustration perfectly depicts how MAGA populists treat Donald Trump.
This system is rotten to the core and it needs to be broken. Broken down, broken up, and ended.
The hopes of either the Democrats or the Republicans waking up and addressing it seem slim. The GOP is so besotted with it's wealthy leaders that the Speaker of the House, who claims to be a devout Christian, is attempting to keep the release of the names of wealthy hebephiles secret. Only wealth and power can explain that. The Democrats, which since 1912 have claimed to be the part of the working man, flounder when trying to handle the economic plight of the middle class. Both parties agree on only one thing, that being you must never consider a third party.
It is really time for a third part in this country.
In reality, of course, there are some, but only one is worth considering in any fashion, that being the American Solidarity Party. Perhaps it could pick up the gauntlet here and smack it across the face of the oligarchy. Or perhaps local parties might do it. In my state, I think that if enough conservative Republicans (real conservatives, not the Cassie Cravens, John Bear, Dave Simpson, Bob Ide, Chuck Gray servants of the Orange Golden Calf Republicans) it could be done locally. The U.S. has a history, although its barely acknowledged, of local parties, including ones whose members often successfully run on the tick of two parties. New York's Zohran Mamdani and David Dinkins, for example were both Democrats and members of the Democratic Socialist Party. Democrats from Minnesota are actually members of the Democratic Farm Labor Party, which is an amalgamation of two parties. There's no reason a Wyoming Party couldn't form and field its own candidates, some of whom could also run as Republicans.
Such a party, nationally or locally, needs to be bold and take on the oligarchy. There's no time to waste on this, as the oligarchy gets stronger every day. And such candidates will meet howls of derision. Locally Californian Chuck Gray, who ironically has looked like the Green Peace Secretary of State on some issues, will howl about how they're all Communist Monarchist Islamic Stamp Collectors. And some will reason to howl, such as the wealthy landlord in the state's legislature.
The reason for that is simple. Such a party would need to apply, and apply intelligently, the principals of subsidiarity, solidarity and the land ethic. It would further need to be scientific, agrarianistic, and distributist.
The first thing, nationally or locally, that such a party should do is bad the corporate ownership of retail outlets. Ban it. That would immediately shift retail back to the middle class, but also to the family unit. A family might be able to own two grocery or appliance stores, for example, but probably not more than that.
The remote and corporate ownership of rural land needs to come to an immediate end as well. No absentee landlords. People owning agricultural land should be only those people making a living from it.
That model, in fact, should apply overall to the ownership of land. Renting land out, for any reason, ought to be severely restricted. The maintenance of a land renting system, including residential rent, creates landlords, who too often turn into Lords.
On land, the land ethic ought to be applied on a legal and regulatory basis. The American concept of absolute ownership of land is a fraud on human dignity. Ownership of land is just, but not the absolute ownership. You can't do anything you want on your property, nor should you be able to, including the entry by those engaged in natural activities, such as hunting, fishing, or simply hiking, simply because you are an agriculturalist.
While it might be counterintuitive in regard to subsidiarity, it's really the case, in this context, that the mineral resources underneath the surface of the Earth should belong to the public at large, either at the state, or national, level. People make no contribution whatsoever to the mineral wealth being there. They plant nothing and they do not stock the land, like farmers do with livestock. It's presence or absence is simply by happenstance and allowing some to become wealthy and some in the same category not simply by luck is not fair. It
Manufacturing and distribution, which has been address, is trickier, but at the end of the day, a certain amount of employee ownership of corporations in this category largely solves the problem. People working for Big Industry ought to own a slice of it.
And at some level, a system which allows for the accumulation of obscene destructive levels of wealth is wrong. Much of what we've addressed would solve this. You won't be getting rich in retail if you can only have a few stores, for example. And you won't be a rich landlord from rent if most things just can't be rented. But the presence of the massively wealthy, particularly in an electronic age, continues to be vexing. Some of this can be addressed by taxation. The USCCB has stated that "the tax system should be continually evaluated in terms of its impact on the poor.” and it should be. The wealthy should pay a much more progressive tax rate.
These are, of course, all economic, or rather politico-economic matters. None of this addresses the great or stalking horse social issues of the day. We'll address those, as we often have, elsewhere. But the fact of the matter is, right now, the rich and powerful use these issues to distract. Smirky Mike Johnson may claim to be a devout Christian, but he's prevented the release of names of men who raped teenage girls. Donald Trump may publicly state that he's worried about going to Hell, but he remains a rich serial polygamist. J.D. Vance may claim to be a devout Catholic, but he spends a lot of time lying through his teeth.
And, frankly, fix the economic issues, and a lot of these issues fix themselves.
This includes the excellent essay The Idiocy of Urban Life, which I've occasionally cited here under its original The New Republic name, The Cows Revenge.
Announcement confirming that Trump wine and cider is now stocked at Coast Guard BX's.
Sigh.
Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State. The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.
