Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/178

 60 PROPERTY IN LAND.

beings ; that glens which once sent forth their thousand fighting men are now tenanted by a couple of game- keepers; that there is destitution and degradation that would shame savages ; that little children are stunted and starved for want of proper nourishment ; that women are compelled to do the work of animals; that young girls who ought to be fitting themselves for wifehood and motherhood are held to the monotonous toil of factories, while others, whose fate is sadder still, prowl the streets ; that while a few Scotsmen have castles and palaces, more than a third of Scottish families live in one room each, and more than two-thirds in not more than two rooms each; that thousands of acres are kept as playgrounds for strangers, while the masses have not enough of their native soil to grow a flower, are shut out even from moor and mountain; dare not take a trout from a loch or a salmon from the sea !

If the Duke thinks all classes have gained by the advance in civilization, let him go into the huts of the Highlands. There he may find countrymen of his, men and women the equals in natural ability and in moral character of any peer or peeress in the land, to whom the advance of our wondrous age has brought no gain. He may find them tilling the ground with the crooked spade, cutting grain with the sickle, threshing it with the flail, winnowing it by tossing it in the air, grinding it as their forefathers did a thousand years ago. He may see spinning-wheel and distaff yet in use, and the smoke from the fire in the center of the hut ascending as it can through the thatch, that the precious heat, which costs so much labor to pro- cure, may be economized to the utmost. These human beings are in natural parts and powers just such human beings as may be met at a royal levee, at a gathering of scientists, or inventors, or captains of industry. That they so live and so work, is not because of their stupidity,

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