How did a family of four come to acquire such a gigantic property, and hold on to it?
Putting Proper back in “Property” – Part 7
How many of you remember the TV show “Bonanza“? Can you picture the opening sequence with the map of the Ponderosa, the ranch of the Cartwright family. The map starts to burn, ignited, iconically, by a red hot branding iron. Then, with that great theme music introducing them, we see Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe riding up on their horses.
Besides giving you a chance to reminisce about “the good ol’ days” of television, or of unchallenged white patriarchy in the west, why might I have brought this up? For many years now, despite the fact that I loved that show – which showcased some pretty clever moral dilemmas and resolutions, something has bothered me about the setting. Recall that map again. The Ponderosa was situated in ultra prime real estate, even for the pioneering times of the mid- to late-1800′s. How did the Cartwright family acquire that land? How does anybody come to acquire that much land? Was the acquisition proper?
What I’m getting at here is the need to put aside our assumptions that Ben Cartwright, who had three sons by three different wives – none of whom apparently survived, was super moral and upright. How did he come to own the 500,000 acre ranch? Isn’t that a little bit much for one man/family? There were several episodes in which travelers, passing through the property, stopped and camped on the family’s land. The place was so vast, and so unspoiled – with no visible signs of ownership, that some of these passers-by considered the land open and unclaimed. As part of the plot for those episodes, there would be a meeting and/or confrontation in which the Cartwrights would inform the visitors that they were welcome … for a while, but that they would eventually need to keep on moving.
Now, this setting is fictitious, but there are numerous real examples of vast private land holdings in the United States of America, as well as Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, among others. How have these properties originated? Ought we support gigantic holdings as a matter of course?
As I have hinted at earlier in this series, the idea of divine proclamation is rejected. So, is the idea of imperial proclamation. Just because Christopher Columbus came along, stuck a flag in the soil, and claimed a continent for the King or Queen, does not mean we must take him seriously. Of course, now, in our modern place of 20/20 hindsight, we see this easily. Unfortunately, the titles of countless farms, ranches, homes, and businesses in southern and southwestern states originate in some “land grant” by the King of Spain (or through his Governors in Mexico).
What?! The whole edifice of ownership in much of the United States is a sham? Based on false claims of a divinely-appointed ruler?! Yes, and it’s too late to go back and fix it.
Still, it is worth our while to think and reflect on how land acquisition could have been handled originally – and, no doubt, was handled more properly in certain places by certain individuals. In other words, what is the moral and just manner to acquire land? This goes back to several fundamental issues considered by John Locke, the great English philosopher who, by his Two Treatises of Government (1690), is the source of the property rights theory that underlies our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
As Locke explained so clearly, it is natural and right for persons to mix their labor with their surroundings to extend their ability to survive and thrive in the world. He saw, by the way, that there are logical limits to that extension. He considered unused property to be wasteful, an offense against nature. But who decides?
This topic is as huge as it is important. I am asking basic questions about the morality of property and property rights. My direct or indirect criticism of certain historical events, and of the legal basis for most “real” property (due to the root of the titles), should not be taken as criticism for the institution of property as a whole, for I am in basic and profound agreement with Locke. My objective in this series is to restore the full respect due his conception of property – which hinges on its proper origins, and to clarify the many nuances that have brought it under such scrutiny and distrust in modern times.
It is a tribute to this scholar that he foresaw what happens when a man (or a nation) puts too much on his plate. Hey – even my mother told me, “Don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach.”
