Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/102

 94 THE LAND QUESTION.

nightfall is a risk, and where you have far more need to go armed and to be wary than in the backwoods. There are dens into which men are lured only to be drugged and robbed, sometimes to be murdered. All the resources of science and inventive genius are exhausted in making burglar-proof strong rooms and safes, yet, as the steel plate becomes thicker and harder, so does the burglar's tool become keener. If the combination lock cannot be picked, it is blown open. If not a crack large enough for the introduction of powder is left, then the air-pump is applied and a vacuum is created. So that those who in the heart of civilization would guard their treasures safely must come back to the most barbarous device, and either themselves, or by proxy, sleeplessly stand guard. What sort of a civilization is this? In what does civilization essentially consist if not in civility that is to say, in respect for the rights of person and of property ?

Yet this is not all, nor the worst. These are but the grosser forms of that spirit that in the midst of our civili- zation compels every one to stand on guard. What is the maxim of business intercourse among the most highly respectable classes ? That if you are swindled it will be your own fault ; that you must treat every man you have dealings with as though he but wanted the chance to cheat and rob you. Caveat emptor. "Let the buyer beware." If a man steal a few dollars he may stand a chance of going to the penitentiary I read the other day of a man who was sent to the penitentiary for stealing four cents from a horse-car company. But, if he steal a million by business methods, he is courted and flattered, even though he steal the poor little savings which washerwomen and sewing-girls have brought to him in trust, even though he rob widows and orphans of the security which dead men have struggled and stinted to provide.

This is a most Christian city. There are churches and churches. All sorts of churches, where are preached all

�� �