Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/69



QUEST

49

the millions of years which seem to us slow in bringing us to our present state are but as a watch in the night of Time.

The man who measures the possibili- ty of human progress by what he can guess at in the brief spark of his own generation is short sighted indeed. So- cialism would and perhaps will solve the anthracite coal problem by placing the ownership and control of the coal lands in the government as trustee for the people. When that is done I be- lieve a few will control the government in order to control what the govern- ment controls.

Anarchy would and perhaps will solve it by saying to the owners: **If you have no right to shut down all coal mines and forbid all coal mining, neither have you a right to mine only what you are capable of mining to day and to forbid anyone else to mine on the lands you do not intend to use for years and generations to come. Your right to any part of the earth's valuable deposits does not go beyond what you can actually mine for the benefit of the consumers: that is to say, a reasonable

space for your present and future oper- ations. And whoever finds vacant and unused lands shall have a right to oc- cupy and mine it. Title shall be iti use and possession of the land, not in a paper record. Personally I believe this the freer and better solution.

If this title existed today, the miners would not have struck. They would never strike. They would have moved on to some of the vacant coal land and gone to mining and that would contiii- ue so long as the demand for coal made a certain amount of rtHning profitabL*, for small as the coal area is, it is still more than abundant for all needs we can foresee if only it were open to iise. Demand and supply would have free play. Those willing and able to mine would have free play. But so long as the exclusive ownership of all the coal continues as now, the work of the commission is useless except to inform the public mind. Wages and price are as beyond the regulation of a commis- sion or a legislature as the tides are be- yond regulation by proclamation.

C. E. S. Wood.

Quest

By 61U 6inltb KraAl

My heart, a smitten builder, goes

About Life's Babel vast,

To find if fellow-builder knows

Or speaks her language past.

Each, with her low words and pleading.'

dumb, But meets indifferent mood; Yet prays she, — Oh, to understand! Oh, to be understood!

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