“But,” said Maximilian, with a smile, “it would not take long for your rich men, with their surplus wealth, to establish all those works you speak of.  What would you do with the accumulations of the rest?”

“Well,” said I, “we should find plenty to do.  We would put their money, for instance, into a great fund and build national railroads, that would bring the productions of the farmers to the workmen, and those of the workmen to the farmers, at the least cost of transportation, and free from the exactions of speculators and middlemen.  Thus both farmers and workmen would live better, at less expense and with less toil.”

“All very pretty,” said he; “but your middlemen would starve.

“Not at all,” I replied; “the cunning never starve.  There would be such a splendid era of universal prosperity that they would simply turn their skill and shrewdness into some new channels, in which, however, they would have to give something of benefit, as an equivalent for the benefits they received.  Now they take the cream, and butter, and beef, while some one else has to raise, feed and milk the cow.”

“But,” said he, “all this would not help our farmers in their present condition—­they are blotted off the land.”

“True,” I replied; “but just as I limited a man’s possible wealth, so should I limit the amount of land he could own.  I would fix a maximum of, say, 100 or 500 acres, or whatever amount might be deemed just and reasonable.  I should abolish all corporations, or turn them back into individual partnerships.  Abraham Lincoln, in the great civil war of the last century, gave the Southern insurgents so many days in which to lay down their arms or lose their slaves.  In the same way I should grant one or two years’ time, in which the great owners of land should sell their estates, in small tracts, to actual occupants, to be paid for in installments, on long time, without interest.  And if they did not do so, then, at the end of the period prescribed, I should confiscate the lands and sell them, as the government in the old time sold the public lands, for so much per acre, to actual settlers, and turn the proceeds over to the former owners.”

“But, as you had abolished interest on money, there could be no mortgages, and the poor men would starve to death before they could raise a crop.”

“Then,” I replied, “I should invoke the power of the nation, as was done in that great civil war of 1861, and issue paper money, receivable for all taxes, and secured by the guarantee of the faith and power of five hundred million people; and make advances to carry these ruined peasants beyond the first years of distress—­that money to be a loan to them, without interest, and to be repaid as a tax on their land.  Government is only a machine to insure justice and help the people, and we have not yet developed half its powers.  And we are under no more necessity to limit ourselves to the governmental precedents of our ancestors than