The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad foil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds-where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough-a modest living-and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities of the simple body and the simple soul.
Authentication Score 3
Citation
Traubel, Horace. With Walt Whitman in Camden. Vol. 2, Mitchell Kennerley, 1915. Originally stated in a conversation with Walt Whitman, 3 Aug. 1888.