ABSTRACT
America is the most mature of the English-speaking colonies. And in all of these colonial nations the mainspring of the enterprise and the enduring preoccupation of the people has been the exploitation of natural resources for private gain. In the matter of absentee ownership the case of America is peculiar in some respects, although the special features of the case are not such that it departs from the main line of the development in any material degree. The absentee owner of natural resources is enabled to make them a source of free income, that is to say make them assets, by the power legally conferred on him to withhold them from use until his charge for their use is allowed him. The farmer-owners commonly are absentee owners to this extent. In the American tradition, and in point of historical fact out of which the tradition has arisen, the farmer has been something of a pioneer.
