Howard Crosby, writing in the Forum a few
years since, says : " The healthiest form of
human society is where the many are equally
independent in their management of their
affairs, where professions and trades are repre-
sented by individual thinking minds, and where
those engaged in any one branch of industry
stand on a level with one another. This con-
dition of things promotes invention, activity,
interest, manliness, and good citizenship. Now
the gold-hunt system is directly antagonistic to
all this. It seeks to destroy the many inde-
pendent tradesmen, and to make them servants
in a gigantic monopoly. The happy homes of
freemen become the pinched quarters of serfs.
