Henry Thoreau on Capitalism and the Environment

I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.

What sort of a country is that where huckleberry fields are private property? When I pass such fields on the highway, my heart sinks within me.... I cannot think of it ever after but as the place where fair and palatable berries are converted into money, where the huckleberry is desecrated.

[When] we exclude mankind from gathering berries in our field, we exclude them from gathering health and happiness and inspiration and a hundred other far finer and nobler fruits than berries which are found there, but which we have no notion of gathering and shall not gather ourselves nor ever carry to market, for there is no market for them, but let them rot on the bushes. We thus strike only one more blow at a simple and wholesome relation to nature.

Among the Indians the earth and its productions generally were common and free to all the tribe, like the air and water, but among us who have supplanted the Indians, the public retain only a small yard or common in the middle of the village, with perhaps a graveyard beside it.

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several—where a stick should never be cut for fuel—nor for the navy, nor to make wagons, but stand and decay for higher uses—a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation.

(Walden 26-27; Wild Fruits 57-58, 235, 238)