quarter of an acre reached the gigantic value of $1,250,000.2 At this identical time large numbers of the working class, which had so largely created this value, were begging vainly for work, and were being evicted by the tens of thousands in Chicago because they could not pay rent for their miserable, cramped habitations.
By exchanging a few hundred, or a few thousand dollars, in Chicago's extreme youth, for a scrap of paper called a deed, the buyer of this land found himself after the lapse of years, a millionaire. It did not matter where or how he obtained the purchase money: whether he swindled, or stole, or inherited it, or made it honestly;—so long as it was not counterfeit, the law was observed. After he got the land he was under no necessity of doing anything more than hold on to it, which same he could do equally well, whether in Chicago or buried in the depths of Kamschatka. If he chose, he could get chronically drunk; he could gamble, or drone in laziness; he could do anything but work. Nevertheless, the land and all its values which others created, were his forever, to enjoy and dispose of as suited his individual pleasure.
This was, and is still, the system. Thoroughly riveted in law, it was regarded as a rational, beneficent and everlasting fixture of civilized life—by the beneficiaries. And as these latter happened to be, by virtue of their possessions, among the real rulers of government, their conceptions and interests were embodied in law, thought and custom as the edict of civilization. The whole concurrent institutions of society, which were but the echo of property interests, pronounced the system wise and just, and, as a reigning force, do still so proclaim it. In such a state there was nothing abnormal in any man monopolizing land and exclusively appropriating its revenues. On the contrary, it was considered a superior stroke of business, a splendid example of astuteness. Marshall Field was looked upon as a very sagacious business man.