He vowed that he would find it. And afterwards as he
rode in the Oakland foothills came the flash-like revelation
-- the monopoly of the land, the locking up of the store-
house of nature! There was the seat of the evil. He
asked no one if he was right: he knew he was right. Had
he not come into the new country and grown up with the
phases of change? Had he not seen this young com-
munity develop the ills from which the older communities
suffered? He did not need to go to books or to consult
the sages. There the thing lay plainly to view for any
who would see.

On Sunday night, March 26, in his work-room in the
second story of the Stevenson Street house, Henry George
sat down to write out the simple answer to the riddle of
the Sphinx. When ultimately finished it made a pamphlet
of forty-eight closely printed pages, equivalent to one hun-
dred and fifty pages of an ordinary book. To it he gave
the title, "Our Land and Land Policy, National and
State." He divided his subject into five parts, which we
shall briefly review, following the author's language wher-
ever possible.

The secret of the confidence of Americans in their own.
destiny and the reason of their cheerful welcome to the
down-trodden of every nation, lay in the knowledge of the
"practically inexhaustible" public domain spreading over
the great Western country that would provide farms and
homes for all. But beginning with the Civil War period,
a policy of dissipation of the public lands commenced, and

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