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WATER STEALS, AND CARRIES TO THE SEA
WATER STEALS, AND CARRIES TO THE SEA
THE LAW OF THE WATERS
We rise high in this great and glittering steel bird to take a glimpse of our continent with its real earth and trees and waters.
For what we really want to know is how our government is running, and how the water is running on our land. As the water runs, so runs our government. If water is let loose by our artificial civilization to run as it pleases, it becomes a thief, and carries our wealth—and liberty—off to sea, never to return.
We want to know what we are getting out of this earth. More, we want to know if we are getting our share of the land, and whether someone else is getting too much. We want a stake in the land, in one form or another—be it job, stocks and bonds, check-book, machinery control, or farm; we want it for our children, too. And we don't want it plundered or wasted by man, machine-devil or corporation.
But look! Look!
What we see is the great continent of the United States of America. As we rise higher and our horizon broadens, we can forget for a moment our local and little interests. Let's take a look at our map.
The thing that looks like a tree is the Mississippi Valley, with rivers rolling on down to the Gulf. Try to comprehend what it means, and then look at an ordinary map of the United States.
On it you will see the artificial lines of the states. All the rivers you see over the continent run across these artificial state lines, across counties, cities, townships, across all of our artificial boundaries, without asking permission of the Supreme Court, the Constitution, the American people, or of any of all the judges, sheriffs, and cops in the country. Not one or all of these can stop one little drop with writs or commands or guns.
Take a look at one of the newer western states, Colorado—just four straight lines, and many of the others, merely mapped out by surveyors according to instructions from men in Washington who had never seen the land. Because these lines were drawn, do drainage courses change? Do rivers, creeks, forests, minerals, or anything that God put upon the land? Certainly not.
That is why we need one supreme law of the land, a law for a continent, for the people and the earth and the waters. For if these elements are wasted and thrown away, if water and dust storms are allowed to wash and blow at will because of some foolish or selfish idea about those artificial state lines, we shall have no country at all.
Therefore, let us all understand, wherever we live, that this is our country, "one and indivisible"—that earth cannot be kept in place by the imposition of artificial lines, by legalistic phrases, black robes and solemn faces. For the water keeps running along, and as it runs, it washes our land and our living away.
But just what is a constitution?
For what we really want to know is how our government is running, and how the water is running on our land. As the water runs, so runs our government. If water is let loose by our artificial civilization to run as it pleases, it becomes a thief, and carries our wealth—and liberty—off to sea, never to return.
We want to know what we are getting out of this earth. More, we want to know if we are getting our share of the land, and whether someone else is getting too much. We want a stake in the land, in one form or another—be it job, stocks and bonds, check-book, machinery control, or farm; we want it for our children, too. And we don't want it plundered or wasted by man, machine-devil or corporation.
But look! Look!
What we see is the great continent of the United States of America. As we rise higher and our horizon broadens, we can forget for a moment our local and little interests. Let's take a look at our map.
The thing that looks like a tree is the Mississippi Valley, with rivers rolling on down to the Gulf. Try to comprehend what it means, and then look at an ordinary map of the United States.
On it you will see the artificial lines of the states. All the rivers you see over the continent run across these artificial state lines, across counties, cities, townships, across all of our artificial boundaries, without asking permission of the Supreme Court, the Constitution, the American people, or of any of all the judges, sheriffs, and cops in the country. Not one or all of these can stop one little drop with writs or commands or guns.
Take a look at one of the newer western states, Colorado—just four straight lines, and many of the others, merely mapped out by surveyors according to instructions from men in Washington who had never seen the land. Because these lines were drawn, do drainage courses change? Do rivers, creeks, forests, minerals, or anything that God put upon the land? Certainly not.
That is why we need one supreme law of the land, a law for a continent, for the people and the earth and the waters. For if these elements are wasted and thrown away, if water and dust storms are allowed to wash and blow at will because of some foolish or selfish idea about those artificial state lines, we shall have no country at all.
Therefore, let us all understand, wherever we live, that this is our country, "one and indivisible"—that earth cannot be kept in place by the imposition of artificial lines, by legalistic phrases, black robes and solemn faces. For the water keeps running along, and as it runs, it washes our land and our living away.
But just what is a constitution?
