Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/95

 CHAPTER XV.

THE CIVILIZATION THAT IS.

WHEN we think of the civilization that might be, how poor and pitiful, how little better than utter barbarism, seems this civilization of which we boast! Even here, where it has had the freest field and fullest development ! Even here !

This is a broad land and a rich land. How wide it is, how rich it is, how the fifty millions of us already here are but beginning to scratch it, a man cannot begin to realize, till he does some thousands of miles of traveling over it. There are a school and a church and a newspaper in every hamlet ; we have no privileged orders, no legacies of antiquated institutions, no strong and covertly hostile neighbors, who in fancy or reality oblige us to keep up great standing armies. We have had the experience of all other nations to guide us in selecting what .is good and rejecting what is bad. In politics, in religion, in science, in mechanism, everything shows the latest improvements. We think we stand, and in fact we do stand, in the very van of civilization. Food here is cheaper, wages higher, than anywhere else. There is here a higher average of education, of intelligence, of material comfort, and of individual opportunity, than among any other of the great civilized nations. Here modern civilization is at its very best. Yet even here !

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