LAND AND ITS RENT 
 
 W I 7 FRANC I S A. WALKER 
 
 Cop/2 
 
DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 
 
 Alcove, 
 Shelf,.. 
 
 BEET BeALL, 
 
 Her and Stationer, 
 
LAND 
 
 AND 
 
 ITS RENT. 
 
 BY 
 
 }v^,^ '' 
 
 FRANCIS A. WALKER, Ph.D., LL.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OP THE MASSACHUSETTS ESTSTITUTE OP TECHNOLOGY; AUTHOR OP 
 
 "the WAGES QUESTION;" " MONEY ; " " MONEY, TRADE, AND 
 
 industry;" POLITICAL ECONOMY:" ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1883. 
 
!C >^ 
 
 H3^^i 
 
 (0 
 
 /•' 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, 
 
 By Little, Beown, and Company, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Camfiritfse *♦ 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 ^ I ^HIS volume contains the substance of four 
 lectures, delivered in Harvard University 
 in May, 1883. The lecture-form, and also, 
 so far as possible, the lecture-tone, have been 
 dropped in preparing the work for the press, 
 while some matters of detail have been added, 
 which neither time nor the conditions of oral 
 delivery allowed to be introduced on the former 
 occasion. 
 
 The author is aware that he is regarded by 
 his American brethren as somewhat heretical 
 in the view he takes of the relations of wages 
 to the interest of capital and to the profits of 
 business management, which view may be 
 summed up in two propositions, namely: — 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 1st. Under perfect competition, the laborer 
 would become the residual claimant upon the 
 product of industry ,1 the amount to be deducted 
 on account of rent, interest, and business profits 
 being subject to definite principles, and, conse- 
 quently, all gains in productive power would, 
 upon this condition, inure directly to the benefit 
 of the laborer. 2d. With imperfect and unequal 
 competition, the economic harmonies do not pre- 
 vail, the laborer surely losing his interest if he 
 does not himself seek his interest. All economic 
 injuries inflicted in the distribution of wealth 
 tend, moreover, to abide and to deepen, while 
 industrial society itself, as a whole, suffers in 
 the ultimate result, through the reaction of dis- 
 tribution upon production. 
 
 But while the author of the present treatise 
 thus fails to satisfy the requirements of eco- 
 nomic orthodoxy, in regard to the relation of 
 wages to the interest of capital and to the prof- 
 its of business management, he is, in his view 
 
 1 For tlie elaboration of tliis proposition, the author would 
 refer to pp. 265, 266, of his Political Economy. 
 
PEEFACE. V 
 
 of tlie origin of rent and its influence upon 
 the distribution of wealth, a Eicardian of the 
 Eicardians, holding that the great thinker who 
 has given his name to the economic doctrine of 
 rent left little for those who should follow him 
 to do ; and that any wide departure from the 
 lines laid down by him can only result in con- 
 fusion and error. 
 
 The author is well aware that the tone of his 
 allusions to Frederic Bastiat will grieve many 
 of the American admirers of that most ingeni- 
 ous, eloquent, and sentimental essayist ; but it 
 seems full time that the plain truth regarding 
 Bastiat's theory of value, whether as applied 
 to land or to commercial products, should be 
 spoken out on this side the water, as it was 
 long ago, in England, by Professor Cairnes. In 
 his power of raillery and sarcasm, in the gracious 
 charm of his narrative, in the purity and ear- 
 nestness of his philanthropic purpose, Bastiat 
 cannot sufficiently be admired; but as a con- 
 structive economist he made a dead failure, 
 while his views regarding the land are espe- 
 cially erroneous. 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 For the spirit in whicli he discusses the views 
 of a writer who deliberately proposes that Gov- 
 ernment shall confiscate the entire value of 
 landed property, without compensation to those 
 who, under the express sanction and encourage- 
 ment of Government itself, have inherited or 
 bought their estates, the author has no apol- 
 ogy to offer. Every honest man will resent 
 such a proposition as an insult. 
 
 Boston, October, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 o 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Economic Doctrine of Rent . 5 
 II. Attacks upon the Doctrine of 
 
 Rent 57 
 
 III. Recent Attacks upon Landed Prop- 
 
 erty 121 
 
 IV. The Best Holding of the Land . 183 
 
 Index 221 
 
3 
 
 -n 
 
 
LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 
 
 ^ I ^HE immediate reason for the publication 
 -■- of this work is found in the course of 
 economic discussion during the few months 
 now passing. Altogether unexpectedly, and, 
 so far as one can see, without any cause exist- 
 ing in the economic relations of society, the 
 questions of the rightfulness and the expe- 
 diency of private property in land, and of the 
 influence of rent upon the distribution of wealth, 
 have been precipitated upon us, almost as if 
 they were new questions. Whatever may be 
 true of France and Germany, it must be said 
 that never in England has the discussion of the 
 equities and the economics of landed property 
 been so active and earnest as now; while in 
 the United States, where practically, the ques- 
 
b LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 tion of the private ownership of the soil has 
 not heretofore even been raised, we find popu- 
 lar attention bestowed in a remarkable degree 
 upon a book, now perhaps in its hundredth 
 edition, the fundamental proposition of which 
 is that " the recognition of exclusive property 
 in land is necessarily a denial of the right of 
 property in the products of labor," and whose 
 practical proposals embrace the virtual abolition 
 of private property in land through the confis- 
 cation of rents by the State, — the author of 
 this work ax3pearing as a welcome contributor 
 to influential journals and reviews, and receiv- 
 ing the greeting of crowded assemblies as the 
 apostle of great sociological and economical 
 reforms. 
 
 It will be said : " The publication of such a 
 work is certainly a curious phenomenon of the 
 times, and a very disagreeable phenomenon; 
 but surely the work itself cannot call for any 
 serious consideration. ISTo intelligent person 
 will read far in a book in which such gross 
 incapacity for economical thinking is exhibited, 
 in which a scheme so mad and anarchical is 
 brought forward. Surely, society must long 
 since have passed the point where it was nec- 
 essary to discuss propositions like these, or to 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 7 
 
 refute a writer who gives snch ample warning 
 of the dangerous nature of his doctrines." 
 
 But I think we cannot deal quite in this 
 spirit with Mr. Henry George's " Progress and 
 Poverty." As the London Quarterly Eeview 
 remarks : " False theories, when they bear 
 directly upon action, do not claim our atten- 
 tion in proportion to the talent they are sup- 
 ported by, but in proportion to the extent to 
 which action is likely to be influenced by 
 them ; and since action in modern politics so 
 largely depends on the people, the wildest errors 
 are grave, if they are only sufficiently popu- 
 lar. . . . How they strike the wise is a matter 
 of small moment; the great question is how 
 they will strike the ignorant. . . . For practical 
 purposes no proposals are ridiculous unless 
 they are ridiculous to the mass of those who 
 may act upon them. In any question in which 
 the people are powerful no fallacy is refuted if 
 the people still believe in it." ^ Unfortunately 
 there is too much evidence of a profound popu- 
 lar effect produced by this work upon the public 
 mind of Great Britain, and, though more tardily, 
 upon the public mind of the United States. 
 The work was, in fact, published in 1879 ; 
 
 1 Quarterly Review, January, 1883. 
 
8 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 but tliough it had a ready sale and attracted not 
 a little attention, and even elicited some heed- 
 less commendation by reason of the eloquence 
 and picturesqueness of its style, it created its 
 first sensation when reprinted abroad. In 
 Great Britain the success of this book has been 
 truly remarkable. 
 
 " It is not the poor/' says the Eeview just 
 cited, " it is not the seditious, only, who have 
 been- thus affected by Mr. George's doctrines. 
 They have received a welcome, which is even 
 more singular, amongst certain sections of the 
 really instructed classes. They have been 
 gravely listened to by a conclave of English 
 clergymen. Scotch ministers and non-conform- 
 ist professors have done more than listen ; they 
 have received them with marked approval; 
 they have even held meetings and given lec- 
 tures to disseminate them. Finally, certain 
 trained economic thinkers, or men who pass 
 for such, in at least one of our imiversities, are 
 reported to have said that they see no means 
 of refuting them, and that they probably mark 
 the beginning of a new political epoch." 
 
 Such a reception could hardly be accorded 
 an American book abroad, without awakening 
 new interest and stimulating a wider demand 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 9 
 
 at home. It is said that "Progress and Pov- 
 erty " has reached an enormous circulation. 
 The author has certainly come to be one of 
 the lions of the hour. There is no reason to 
 suppose that his doctrines have yet deeply in- 
 fected the public mind of this country ; yet the 
 ingenuity and eloquence of this writer must 
 produce no uiconsiderable effect upon any 
 reader, however intelligent, and however forti- 
 fied by economic study. 
 
 It is in view of this fresh discussion of the 
 tenure of land and of rent in its relations to the 
 distribution of wealth, that it has seemed best 
 to take occasion to go over the field, step by 
 step, through its whole extent. I shall there- 
 fore deA^ote this the present chapter to an ele- 
 mentary statement of the economic law of rent. 
 In the second chapter I shall discuss the at- 
 tacks made by Messrs. Bastiat, Carey, and 
 Leroy-Beaulieu upon that doctrine. In the 
 third chapter I shall undertake to deal with 
 attacks upon the individual ownership of land, 
 as made, not by those who denounce all species 
 of property, but by those who admit private 
 property in the products of labor, of which they 
 deem private property in land an invasion. In 
 
10 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 this connection attention will be invited to tlie 
 later essays and sioeeches of Mr. Mill and to 
 Mr. Henry George's work. In the fourth and 
 last chapter I shall present some considera- 
 tions related to the question. What, conceding 
 the individual ownership of land, is that use 
 of the soil which is most conducive to social 
 and industrial welfare ? 
 
 In pursuance of this scheme, let us now in- 
 quire into the origin of rent. 
 
 We will begin by assuming the existence of 
 an isolated community occupying a territory 
 of varying fertility. Let it, however, for sim- 
 plicity of illustration, be conceded that, instead 
 of an infinite diversity in this respect, each 
 acre having its own rate of productiveness, the 
 territory is divided into four tracts, each dis- 
 tinctly defined. 
 
 Thus, we might suppose that one tract would, 
 with the application of a given amount of labor 
 and capital, yield to the acre 24 bushels of 
 wheat; the second, 22 bushels; the third, 20 
 bushels ; the fourth, 18 bushels. 
 
 Such a supposition does not transcend the 
 limits of a reasonable assumption for the pur- 
 poses of argument. The differences of fertility 
 existing among the cultivated lands of any con- 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 11 
 
 siderable district are not only as great as those 
 indicated, but often very much greater. Thus, 
 Mr. McCuUoch, the author of the '' Statistical 
 Account of the British Empire," says : "A quar- 
 ter of wheat may be raised in Kent, or Essex, 
 or in the Carse of Gowrie, for a fourth or a 
 fifth part, perhaps, of the expense necessary to 
 raise it on the worst soils under cultivation." 
 The range of productiveness among lands oc- 
 cupied for the purposes of pasturage is very 
 much wider still. Thus Sir James Caird, in 
 his admirable work, " The Landed Interest and 
 the Supply of Food," says : " The maximum of 
 fertility, in the natural state, is a rich pasture 
 capable of fattening an ox and two sheep an 
 acre. Such soils are exceptional, though in 
 most counties they are to be met with. . . . 
 The minimum of fertility may be exemplified 
 by a bleak mountain pasture where ten acres 
 will barely maintain a small sheep." 
 
 Now, in the case of the community under 
 view, let us first take the stage where the pop- 
 ulation yet remains so small that it can be sup- 
 plied with food by the cultivation of only a por- 
 tion of the most fertile of the four tracts of land. 
 
 In this case, if the land in question be held 
 by a number of competmg owners, either no 
 
12 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 rent at all will be paid, or else a rent so small 
 that, for purposes of economic reasoning, we 
 may treat it as no rent at all, the principle 
 de minimis non curatur applying with not 
 less force in economics than in law. 
 
 The above result will be reached by the sim- 
 ple and direct operation of the principle of 
 self-interest among the owners of the land. 
 Inasmuch as only a part of the land of that 
 quality (the 24-bushel tract) is required for 
 cultivation, each proprietor will, if only he can 
 be assured against Waste, ~ of which element 
 we shall speak hereafter,^ — desire to have his 
 own land occupied, even at the smallest rent, 
 rather than derive no income whatever there- 
 from ; and as, by the supposition, all the lots 
 are not required for cultivation, the competi- 
 tion of owners will reduce the compensation 
 for the use of land to that minimum which in 
 economics we may disregard. 
 
 Let us next contemplate the community as 
 increased in numbers until the entire tract of 
 land of the first quality will no longer produce, 
 under the traditional cultivation, — that is, with 
 the farming methods employed, and with the 
 amount of labor and capital heretofore applied 
 
 1 See post, pp. 51-53. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 13 
 
 to tlie soil, — enough wheat for the mamtenance 
 of the population. 
 
 In this state of things the question will arise, 
 Shall the additional labor power, which is al- 
 ways presumed to exist when we speak of an 
 increase of population, and upon which the ad- 
 ditional members of the community must rely 
 for their subsistence, — new hands to feed new 
 mouths, — shall this additional labor power be 
 applied to the soil heretofore under cultivation, 
 or shall it be applied to a portion of the tract 
 standing next in order of fertility and hereto- 
 fore uncultivated, — that which we may call 
 the 2 2 -bushel tract ? 
 
 The answer to this question will depend 
 on the answer to the prior question : Has 
 cultivation on the 24-bushel tract reached the 
 point of diminishing returns, or not ? 
 
 What do we mean by the point of " diminish- 
 ing returns " ? This should be fully and clearly 
 explained before any further progress is at- 
 tempted. The explanation is as follows. In 
 the progressive cultivation of any considerable 
 tract of land having any appreciable degree of 
 fertility, a continually higher and higher degree 
 of per capita production is attained, year by 
 year, as the amount of labor applied to the 
 
14 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 soil increases, until a certain limit is readied. 
 Thus, in the cultivation of a square mile of 
 arable land, two laborers will produce more 
 than twice as much as one ; four laborers will 
 produce more than twice as much as two ; eight 
 laborers will produce more than twice as much 
 as four. Perhaps the eight laborers last al- 
 luded to will produce twelve times as much as 
 the first two, forty times as much as the first 
 one. 
 
 Such increase in productive power is due, 
 first, to the opportunity afforded for co-opera- 
 tion in labor, as, for instance, when two men 
 do easily and rapidly something to which the 
 strength of a single man would be utterly 
 inadequate; and, secondly, to the division of 
 labor and the organization of industry, which 
 yield very great advantages as compared with 
 an earlier industrial state. 
 
 Now, the condition of agricultural develop- 
 ment, in the course of which, by virtue of the 
 mechanical advantages adverted to, the per 
 capita product becomes greater and greater 
 through the addition of new laborers, may be 
 called the condition of "increasing returns." 
 Just as surely, however, as the earth revolves 
 around the sun, if labor continue to be applied 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF KENT. 15 
 
 in increasing amount to the cultivation of any 
 piece of land, a point will be reached — sooner 
 on this piece, later on that, but at some time 
 for every piece, according to the character of 
 the soil — ■ after which more labor applied to 
 the soil will, the art of agriculture and other 
 conditions remaining constant, meet a less than 
 proportional return. 
 
 Some return the new labor applied to the 
 land will undoubtedly secure. We can hardly 
 imagine a situation where more labor judi- 
 ciously applied to any tract ^ would not increase 
 the crop more or less. But, as has been said, 
 the return declines proportionally. From that 
 point forward, additional labor can only be em- 
 ployed in cultivation upon the condition of a 
 smaller and still smaller per capita product. 
 
 The point we have indicated marks the stage 
 of " diminishing returns " in agriculture. "Where 
 
 1 "It might be ploughed or harrowed twice instead of 
 once, or three times instead of twice ; it might be dug 
 instead of being ploughed. ; after ploughing, it might be gone 
 over with a hoe, instead of a harrow, and the soil more com- 
 pletely pulverized ; it might be oftener and more thoroughly 
 weeded ; the implements used might be of a higher finish 
 and more elaborate construction ; a greater quantity or more 
 expensive kinds of manure might be applied, or, when ap- 
 plied, they might be more carefully mixed and incorporated 
 with the soil." — /. S. 3Iill. 
 
16 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 that point is, may not be easily ascertained for 
 any single piece of land, probably never could 
 be ascertained with absolute exactness by any 
 series of experiments ; yet we know that such 
 a point is there, will be reached, will in time 
 be passed, if the application of labor and capital 
 continue. On one side the per capita product 
 rises, rapidly or slowly, but surely and con- 
 stantly, under the mechanical advantages of 
 co-operation in productive effort, the division of 
 employments, the organization of labor. On 
 the other side, the per capita product falls off, 
 slowly or rapidly, but just as surely and con- 
 stantly, under the chemical disadvantages which 
 attend the attempt to extort a greater and still 
 greater crop from the soil. That it does rise 
 on the one side, that it does fall away on the 
 other, is so manifest that no man of sound 
 mind can question the fact. That at some 
 point the turning takes place, reason tells us, 
 though we may not be able to identify that 
 point with assurance. 
 
 Let us now return to the community whose 
 experience with the land, under the condition 
 of increasing population, we have been tracing. 
 The whole extent of the 24-bushel tract having 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT 17 
 
 been occupied, and having proved, under tlie 
 traditional cultivation, inadequate to the needs 
 of subsistence, the question, we see, has arisen, 
 whether the additional labor shall be expended 
 upon that tract, or be carried over to the tract 
 next in order of fertility, — the 2 2 -bushel tract. 
 The decision of that question depends, as has 
 been said, on the decision of the prior question, 
 whether the point of " diminishing returns " has 
 been reached. If not, the additional labor will 
 be applied to the familiar fields. If it have 
 been reached, the additional labor will (subject 
 to a slight hesitation due to that abrupt descent 
 from one grade to another, which we assumed 
 for convenience of illustration, the actual order 
 of nature being an insensible gradation) be 
 transferred to the 22-bushel tract, and thus, in 
 the phrase of the economist, "cultivation will 
 descend to inferior soils." 
 
 That cultivation does so descend is a fact of 
 familiar observation on every hand. There are 
 few farms within which land is not cultivated 
 which is poorer than the best, and it is so culti- 
 vated because the farmer knows that it is more 
 profitable for him to plough and plant a less 
 fertile field than to attempt to force the yield 
 of the more fertile up beyond a certain limit. 
 
 2 
 
18 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Cultivation, then, descending to the 22-bushel 
 tract, Eent emerges. Under what impulse ? 
 Why, by this simple operation of the prin- 
 ciple of self-interest : inasmuch as some of the 
 would-be cultivators must go upon the 22- 
 bushel tract, every person now in occupation of 
 a lot on the 24-bushel tract may just as well 
 — may he not ? — pay something for the privi- 
 lege of remaining where he is, as take up a lot of 
 the new land for nothing ? If not, why not ? 
 
 How much shall he pay ? Wliy, clearly, 
 2 bushels per acre, the difference between the 
 yield of the two tracts, under the same ap- 
 plication of labor and capital. The culti- 
 vator of the better land, raising 24 bushels 
 per acre, and out of this paying 2 bushels 
 for the privilege of cultivation, which we will 
 call Eent, will have 22 bushels left, net, 
 which is all he could, by the supposition, raise 
 from the new land. More than this margin, 
 2 bushels, he will not pay, because, otherwise, 
 he would do better to take up a lot of the 
 new land.^ All of this margin he will pay, 
 because, otherwise, some would-be cultivator 
 
 1 The effects of the indisposition of the cultivator to 
 change his place of labor and residence will be subsequently- 
 allowed for. Bee post, pp. 42-51. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 19 
 
 will offer to pay that rent, and thus cut him 
 out of the occupancy. 
 
 And this rental of 2 bushels per acre will 
 apply to all the land in the 24-bushel tract, 
 and not to a part of it only. As yet, however, 
 no rent whatever is paid for any part of the 
 2 2 -bushel tract, not even for that part which 
 is cultivated, since, inasmuch as only a portion 
 of it is required, competition among proprietors 
 within this tract will prevent rent rising above 
 that minimum which we treat as niL 
 
 If, now, we suppose that, in the progress of 
 population, the numbers of the community in- 
 crease to the point where subsistence up to the 
 traditional standard of living cannot, by the 
 traditional methods of cultivation, be provided 
 from the 24- and the 2 2 -bushel tracts together, 
 recourse will be had to the third grade of soils, 
 comprised within the 20-bushel tract. What 
 will then happen in the matter of rents ? 
 Why, this : the lands of the 20-bushel tract 
 will bear no rent, for the reason which we con- 
 templated in connection with the 22-bushel 
 tract, when that comprised the lowest grade of 
 soils under cultivation ; but rent will now 
 emerge from the land just above it on the scale 
 of fertility, and that rent will measure the 
 
20 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 excess of productiveness, as in the former case. 
 Any actual cultivator of the 22-bushel tract 
 may just as well pay 2 bushels rent, where 
 he is, as go upon the new land, for nothing; 
 any would-be cultivator may just as well settle 
 here, paying this rent, as take up a free tract 
 of the poorer land. 
 
 And now, if we look back to the 24-bushel 
 tract, we note a remarkable phenomenon. The 
 soil here is no better than it was ; nothing has 
 been done to increase its productiveness ; yet 
 suddenly and peremptorily proprietors within 
 this tract demand and receive 4 bushels per 
 acre. Why is this ? Again the result is due 
 to the simple and direct operation of the prin- 
 ciple of self-interest in dealing with the land. 
 Any person, actual cultivator or would-be cul- 
 tivator, may just as well — may he not ? — 
 pay 4 bushels here, as go upon the 22-bushel 
 tract and pay 2 bushels rent, or " squat " 
 upon the 20-bushel tract, paying nothing for 
 the privilege. 
 
 And if the increase of the numbers of the 
 community requires cultivation (which, as we 
 have seen, is always and everywhere subject to 
 the law of " diminishing returns ") again to 
 descend, and the soil within the 18-bushel tract 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 21 
 
 is taken up, we shall find, according to the 
 principle already abundantly illustrated, that 
 this land itself will bear no rent, but that the 
 20-bushel tract will now bear a rent of 2 
 bushels per acre, while the rent of the 22-bushel 
 tract will advance to 4 bushels and that of the 
 24-bushel tract to 6 bushels. 
 
 We state, then, the normal operation of the 
 principle of self-interest in dealing vnth the land 
 (that is, the Laiv of Bent), as folloivs : — 
 
 Bent arises from the fact of varying degrees of 
 productiveness in the lands actually contributing 
 to the supp)ly of the same marhet, the least pro- 
 ductive land paying no rent, or a rent so small 
 that it may he treated as none. The rent of all 
 the higher grades of land is measured upwards 
 from this line, the rent of each piece ahsorling 
 cdl the excess of produce above that of the no-i^ent 
 land. 
 
 Thus far we have, for simplicity of illustra- 
 tion, spoken of fertility and productiveness indis- 
 tinguishably, as if differences in productiveness 
 were due solely to differences in the chemical 
 constituents of the land, the depth of soil, its 
 friabihty, etc., or to differences in climate, all 
 of which are included in our conception of com- 
 parative fertility. 
 
22 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 But we have now to note that the net pro- 
 ductiveness of a tract of land may be reduced, 
 in comparison with another tract of equal fer- 
 tility, by either or both of two considerable 
 causes : — 
 
 1. The mechanical difficulties of cultivation, 
 e. g. irregularity of surface. This consideration 
 has been almost wholly neglected by writers on 
 rent, and naturally enough in the past, when 
 land was cultivated mainly with hand tools, — 
 the hoe, the spade, the scythe, the sickle. But 
 the rapid introduction of horse and even steam 
 power into agricultural operations, since 1850, 
 has made the character of the surface an impor- 
 tant, though not the most important, element in 
 the problem of rent. The land in a New Eng- 
 land side-hill farm may be as fertile as that of an 
 Illinois prairie farm, but the cost of cultivation 
 may in the former case be enhanced thirty or 
 fifty per cent through roughness of surface. 
 
 2. A much more important cause in the reduc- 
 tion of the net productiveness of land, for the 
 purposes of rent, is found in distance from mar- 
 ket. By distance, in this connection, we should 
 understand, not absolute distance, as measured 
 on a great circle of the earth, but resistance to 
 transportation. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 28 
 
 To illustrate the operation of tliis cause, let 
 us return to our four tracts of arable land, sup- 
 plying a certain market, and yielding, respec- 
 tively, 24, 22, 20, and 18 bushels of wheat per 
 acre, with the application of a certam amount 
 of labor and capital. These have been assumed 
 to be all equally near to the market in which 
 their produce is to be sold. 
 
 Now, let us suppose that some enterprising 
 cultivators undertake to open up a large tract 
 of very fertile land situated at a considerable 
 distance. The productiveness of this tract 
 might even reach 30 bushels, as compared with 
 the four tracts described; yet it might be 
 found that, after the grain were harvested, the 
 cattle and the men engaged in hauling the crop 
 to market would eat up, on the round trip, not 
 less than 12 bushels out of the produce of 
 each acre, — in which case this tract would 
 stand, for the purposes of rent, not on a level 
 with the more fertile home tracts, but exactly 
 in the position (30 — 12 = 18) of the 18-bushel 
 tract ; and until this last-named were all taken 
 up, the more distant lands would either not be 
 cultivated at all, or would be cultivated with- 
 out paying rent. 
 
 But should some improvement in the means' 
 
24 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 of transportation reduce the amount of the de- 
 duction to be made from the gross produce, on 
 that account, very important effects might be 
 wrought, not only as influencing the occupation 
 and cultivation of this tract, but also as con- 
 trolling the rent of the home tracts. Let us, 
 first, suppose one bushel saved from the maw of 
 the cattle and men engaged in transporting the 
 crop to market. The net productiveness of 
 the tract (30 — 11) would then be 19. Imme- 
 diately the 18-bushel home tract would be 
 thrown out of cultivation, as the labor and 
 capital previously employed thereon could be 
 more advantageously transferred to the new 
 territory. And now a readjustment of rents 
 must take place. The 19-bushel land will bear 
 no rent. The highest grade of soils will bear 
 a rent (24 — 19) of only 5 bushels ; the second 
 grade, of only 3 ; the third grade, of only 1. 
 If we assume the tracts to be of equal size, the 
 aggregate amount of rents now received by the 
 owners of land will be but 9 as against 12, a 
 reduction of one fourth. Their land is just as 
 good as it was before, yields just as much 
 grain of unimpaired quality; but their rents 
 have fallen, simply because the 18-bushel tract 
 has been thrown out of cultivation, and the 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF KENT. 25 
 
 19-busliel tract substituted as furnisliing tlie 
 poorest grade of soils contributing to the sup- 
 ply of the market. 
 
 Let us further suppose that some improve- 
 ment in carts, or the substitution of draught- 
 horses for oxen, shortens the tmie taken for 
 the transport of the grain, so that only nine 
 bushels have to be deducted from the pro- 
 duce of an acre ; what will be the effect on 
 the cultivation of the several tracts, and on the 
 amounts of rent yielded by them respectively ? 
 The net produce of the distant tract (30 — 9) 
 has now risen to 21 bushels. The 20-bushel 
 tract must be abandoned. No one can culti- 
 vate it and get his outlay back, so long as 
 there is a limitless extent of free land on which 
 wheat can be raised with a smaller expenditure 
 of labor and capital. The highest grade of land 
 now yields a rent of but 3 bushels an acre 
 (24 — 21); the second of but 1 bushel. The 
 aggregate amount received by the owners of 
 land, in rents, sinks from 9 to 4, as the conse- 
 quence of the last step taken, namely, the 
 throwing out of certain soils, the uplifting of 
 the lower limit of cultivation. 
 
 Give the name America to the remote tract 
 in this illustration, and you have a fair explana- 
 
26 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 tion of the tremendous effects produced, during 
 the past few years, upon English and Irish rents, 
 by the increasing severity of competition from 
 this side the Atlantic, following the reduction 
 in the cost of transportation. 
 
 We now reach the second stage of our in- 
 quiry. If rent arises solely as we have de- 
 scribed, and if the amount of rent is measured 
 by the rule that has been laid down, what is 
 the influence of rent upon the distribution of 
 wealth ? Who is richer and who is poorer by 
 reason of it? In particular, how are the la- 
 borers, on the one side, and the consumers of 
 agricultural produce, on the other, affected 
 thereby ? 
 
 To get the clearest possible conception of 
 the relations of the parties in interest, we will 
 assume the English threefold organization for 
 the purposes of agricultural production, — the 
 landlord owning the land and leasing it to 
 tenant farmers, who, on their part, hire those 
 who perform the labor of cultivation, devoting 
 their own time to the buying of tools, supplies, 
 and work animals, to selling the produce, to 
 superintending the progress of each part, by 
 turns, of the work of the farm, while exercising a 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 27 
 
 general administration of the wliole and assum- 
 ing all the responsibilities of production. 
 
 Under such an organization as is here de- 
 scribed, the question of rent is wholly a ques- 
 tion between landlord and tenant. It does not 
 concern the laborer at all. It does not go fur- 
 ther, and touch the interest of the consumer of 
 agricultural produce.^ The laborer, on his part, 
 gets no less wages because rent is paid; the 
 loaf of bread would cost the consumer just as 
 much, were all rents remitted. 
 
 This is "a hard saying," and on its first 
 statement appears incredible, but it is as sure- 
 ly demonstrable as any theorem in geometry. 
 Let us see. 
 
 The normal price of any commodity is fixed 
 by the cost of the production of that part of 
 the supply which is produced under the most 
 disadvantageous conditions. The cost of that 
 portion, whatever that cost may be, will deter- 
 mine the price of all other portions, no matter 
 how much more favorable the conditions under 
 which these may be produced. " 
 
 1 It was one of the greatest of the mistakes of Adam 
 .Smith that he believed rent to enter into the price of agri- 
 cultural produce. "Eent," he says, "enters into the com- 
 position of the price of commodities in a different way from 
 wages and profits. " The fact is, it does not enter at all. 
 
28 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 Appl}dng this principle to a single agricul- 
 tural crop, e. g. wheat, we say that the normal 
 price of wheat will be fixed by the cost of 
 raising it upon the least productive soils which 
 are actually cultivated for the supply of the 
 market. This cost must be covered by the 
 price, or else wheat will not continue to be 
 grown on those soils, while yet the fact that 
 it is grown there now proves that this wheat 
 constitutes a necessary part of the supply of 
 the market. 
 
 Whatever be the price of the wheat grown 
 on the least productive soils, that price will — 
 quality being assumed constant, or allowance 
 being made for differences in quality — be paid 
 for the wheat grown on more productive soils. 
 This is clear, since, if dealers are to attempt to 
 exact a higher price for one lot of wheat than 
 for others, simply because it was raised at a 
 greater cost, no one would buy from that lot. 
 
 But if the price of the whole crop of wheat 
 is to be fixed by the cost of raising it on the 
 least productive soils actually cultivated, then 
 rent is not a part of the price of agricul- 
 tural produce, since the least productive soils 
 pay no rent; and therefore rent cannot be a 
 part of the price of the wheat raised there- 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEIXE OF EENT. 29 
 
 from; and if not of this wheat, then of no 
 wheat/ since, as we have seen, the price of the 
 whole crop is fixed by the cost of that portion 
 which is raised on the no-rent land. 
 
 Let us look at it from another point of view. 
 Suppose a landlord to hold the opinion that 
 rent somehow, after all, in spite of all your 
 fine-spun theories, must swell the price of the 
 baker's loaf, and, in consequence of this con- 
 viction, to remit, in an access of philanthropy, 
 all his rents for the year. What will be the 
 effect on the price of wheat ? I answer, None ; 
 the tenants raising the wheat at the same cost, 
 otherwise, as before, and selling it at a price 
 determined by the cost of raising wheat on 
 lands which pay no rent, would simply pocket 
 the sums they would have paid in rent but for 
 the landlord's bad political economy. 
 
 But, it may be asked, will not the farmers, thus 
 enriched, pay higher wages to their laborers ? 
 No. Why should they ? They have been pay- 
 ing wages at the usual rates, — rates determined 
 by the demand for and the supply of labor. Noth- 
 ing has happened to affect that demand or that 
 supply. Moreover, why, even in equity, should 
 
 1 " Corn is not high because a rent is paid ; but a rent is 
 paid because corn is high." — Ricardo. 
 
30 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 tliey pay higher wages ? They have been paying 
 the same wages as the farmers who cultivate 
 the no-rent lands. Why should laborers work- 
 ing on rich fields receive more than those 
 whose lot it is to work on poor fields ? Where 
 would be the justice of that ? The one set 
 of laborers work as industriously and as effi- 
 ciently as the other. In the matter of desert 
 they are equal ; what should make discrimina- 
 tion between them in the matter of wages ? 
 
 But even though there were the strongest 
 reason, in equity, why tenant farmers should 
 hand over to their laborers the whole or a part 
 of the rents remitted by the landlord, it will be 
 seen that we have no assurance, human nature 
 being what it is, that they would do so. They 
 would pay wages at the old rates, sell their 
 wheat at the old price, and put the difference 
 into their own pockets. No economic force 
 can be invoked which would carry the remitted 
 rents, or any part of them, past the tenant farm- 
 er's door. The landlord would be poorer for 
 his mistake, the farmer richer ; but neither the 
 agricultural laborer nor the consumer of agri- 
 cultural produce would profit by it in the 
 smallest degree. 
 
 We conclude then that, the price of agricul- 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 31 
 
 tural produce being fixed by the cost of raising 
 it on the least productive soils actually con- 
 tributing to the supply of the market, there 
 remains, on all more productive fields, an excess 
 of value above the cost of p)'i'oduction, a surplus, 
 which, so far as the normal operation of the 
 principle of self-interest is concerned, must 
 become the property of the owner of the soil. 
 The owner can give it away, as he can give 
 away anything else that is his, or it can be 
 taken from him by violence, as anything else 
 may be taken ; but no economic force can en- 
 ter to carry rent' to any point where it will 
 either raise the price of labor or lower the 
 price of produce. 
 
 Such, in its simplest elements, is the normal 
 operation of the principle of self-interest in 
 dealing with the land. As formulated by Ei- 
 cardo, this is known as the Economic, or Eicar- 
 dian, doctrine of rent. Surely, no one who has 
 followed me with care will hesitate to say that 
 the doctrine, upon its assumptions, is incon- 
 testably true, and that whoever denies it puts 
 himself on the level of the man who denies 
 that things which are equal to the same thing 
 are equal to each other. 
 
32 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 I spoke of the doctrine as formulated by 
 Eicardo. That illustrious economist was not, 
 indeed, the first to announce the law of rent, 
 which had been correctly and clearly stated by 
 Andersen, a Scotch writer, in 1777. As by 
 him declared, however, the doctrine failed to 
 attract attention. Forty years later, it was, 
 according to the usual statement, " simultane- 
 ously rediscovered," in the early pari? of this 
 century, by Mr. Malthus, Sir Edward West, and 
 Mr. Eicardo. The cogency with which the 
 arguments of the last-named writer were put, 
 the stringency with which the principle in- 
 volved was applied in stating the theory of 
 value and in tracing the effects of taxation 
 upon the distribution of wealth, have served to 
 affix his name permanently to the doctrine, 
 alike in England, in America, and on the con- 
 tinent of Europe. 
 
 We now come to a distinction which is most 
 important in the theory of our subject. The 
 principles thus far laid down relate only to the 
 natural advantages of the land, productively, 
 being such as are derived from fertility, from 
 accessibility for the purposes of cultivation, or 
 from nearness to the market where the produce 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 33 
 
 is to be sold. From this point of view land is 
 contemplated as unimproved. The return that 
 shall be made to productive advantages acquired 
 hy the land through the applications of capital, 
 in the nature of permanent improvements, 
 whether above or beneath the surface, is gov- 
 erned by a law altogether different from that 
 which we have thus far discovered. 
 
 The law of capital differs from the law of 
 rent in this : there is not theoretically any no- 
 interest capital. We have seen that the exist- 
 ence of a body of no-rent lands is essentially 
 involved in the theory of rent. There is noth- 
 ing corresponding to this m the law of capital. 
 Practically it is doubtless true that some capi- 
 tal bears a high interest ; other portions, a low 
 interest; still other portions bring no returns 
 to their owners, while, in cases not infrequent, 
 the capital sum invested may even be itself 
 lost, in whole or in part. But this is not at 
 all involved in the nature of capital. Such a 
 result would be due to the greater or less wis- 
 dom displayed by investors in dealing with the 
 portions of capital placed m their hands. In 
 regard to land, on the contrary, the securing of 
 rent by the owner does not depend on the 
 greater or less wisdom of the proprietor, but is 
 3 
 
34 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 determined by the conditions of the land itself. 
 There is a reason, in the nature of the case, why 
 one piece of land should bring a high rent, an- 
 other a low rent, a third no rent at all. But in 
 regard to two portions of capital, as yet unin- 
 vested, there is no reason why one should bear a 
 higher rate of interest than the other. And so, 
 in theory, not only is there no no-interest capital, 
 but all portions of capital bear an equal rate of 
 interest, the divergences of actual from theoreti- 
 cal interest being due to mistakes of calcula- 
 tion, to misadventures beyond the power of the 
 investor to foresee, to fraud, or other cause alto- 
 gether outside the nature of the capital itself. 
 
 The applications of capital to land are deter- 
 mined by the same force which directs capital to 
 other uses, namely, the expectation of a profit 
 to the investor. If capital be applied to land, 
 it is because the owner looks, wisely or weakly, 
 to obtain, on the whole and in the long run, a 
 return equal (the degree of security being taken 
 fairly into account) to that which could be ob- 
 tained through its application to any of the 
 various purposes of manufacture, transporta- 
 tion, or commerce. 
 
 The main difference between capital invested 
 in agriculture and that invested in other depart- 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 35 
 
 ments of productive effort is found in tlie im- 
 movability of such property. This is, however, 
 a difference not of kind, but of degree only, 
 since capital invested in many other ways 
 becomes immovable, or movable only upon 
 the condition of a heavy charge for transpor- 
 tation, or a great loss of value in adapting it 
 to other uses. 
 
 We note, then, that what shall be paid for 
 the use of land may consist of two parts, — 
 rent proper, the remuneration for what Eicardo 
 called the original and indestructible powers of 
 the soil ; and fictitious rent, which is, in truth, 
 nothing but interest upon capital invested. It 
 is only to the former that the economic doc- 
 trine of rent applies. When I speak of rent, 
 without qualification, I beg to be understood to 
 mean rent proper; though I shall sometimes 
 express the adjective at critical points, as a 
 fresh assurance against misconception. 
 
 It has been said that capital would not be 
 invested in agricultural improvements but for 
 the expectation of a return equal to that de- 
 rived from investments in other directions. 
 But agricultural investments, being in a very 
 high degree immovable, are, of course, subject 
 
36 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 to great or even total loss in case the operation 
 prove to have been made ill-advisedly. 
 
 Now let us further note here, that, in such a 
 case as that just indicated, the loss is not borne 
 in any degree by the proprietor of the soil, as 
 such, be he, in fact, also the owner of the capi- 
 tal invested in the soil, or not, but by the owner 
 of the capital, as such. The loss arising from 
 the failure of capital invested in agricultural 
 improvements is not divided between the rent 
 proper and the interest which together make 
 up what is popularly called rent. Such loss 
 falls wholly upon the interest part of this 
 composite payment. Rent proper takes care 
 of itself. Under the normal operation of the 
 principle of self-interest, rent gets its own in- 
 variably, indefeasibly. 
 
 Let us illustrate. Suppose a field of which 
 the economic rent, meaning thereby the pro- 
 ductive advantages of that field over the poor- 
 est or most distant field under cultivation for 
 the supply of the market, is 50 bushels of 
 wheat a year. Now let an investment of capi- 
 tal take place, in the form of trenches, fences, 
 buildings, or what not, of which the proper 
 annual returns, according to the usual rate of 
 interest, would be 50 bushels. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 37 
 
 Were the produce of the field to be so in- 
 creased thereby that, after repaying the cost of 
 cultivation, a surplus of 120 bushels should 
 remain, the economist does not contemplate 
 this amount as divided equally between rent 
 proper and interest, each receiving 60 bushels. 
 On the contrary, the economist regards the 
 rent of the land as still 50 bushels only, the 
 remainder, 70 bushels, being interest on the 
 investment. But if, in the opposite case, 
 the produce remainmg, after repaying the cost 
 of cultivation, should be but 80 bushels, the 
 economist would regard not 40, but only 30, 
 bushels as compensation for the sum invested 
 in improvements, the amount of rent remain- 
 ing, in any philosophical view, unaffected by 
 the partial failure of that investment. 
 
 The distinction to which attention is here 
 invited is not a mere matter of finesse. It 
 is of vital and vast importance in dealing 
 with the question of the value of land, whether 
 for rental or for sale, as we shall see ^ 
 when we come to consider the attacks made 
 upon the doctrine of rent by Mr. Carey and 
 others. 
 
 It has been said that, upon its assumptions, 
 
 See^os^, i:)p. 76-85, 111, 112. 
 
38 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 that doctrine must be admitted by every person 
 who is capable of understanding the terms in 
 which it is stated. 
 
 It has, however, frequently been alleged that 
 those assumptions are so wide of the facts of 
 human society, that the so-called economic law 
 of rent is of no practical importance in the 
 theory of the distribution of wealth. 
 
 Let us, then, carefully consider the several 
 successive assumptions which underlie this doc- 
 trine. 
 
 1. The doctrine assumes the private owner- 
 ship of land, with real and active competition 
 among proprietors, as contrasted with monop- 
 oly secured by a combination of proprietors, or 
 by a single proprietor ; for instance, the State. 
 
 Thus, to return to the illustration which we 
 pursued so much at length, we said that when 
 the community was yet so small that all the 
 members could be maintained by the cultivation 
 of a portion only of the tract having the highest 
 degree of productiveness, no rent whatsoever 
 would be paid for any portion of that tract, 
 even the portion actually cultivated, or, in 
 any event, only a rent so small that, for pur- 
 poses of economic reasoning, it could safely be 
 disregarded. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF RENT. 39 
 
 But if we suppose that all the proprietors of 
 this tract firmly unite to demand a rent, what 
 will be the result? Competition being de- 
 stroyed, a rent may conceivably be exacted. 
 How large a rent ? What will be its upward 
 limit ? I answer, Two bushels an acre for the 
 whole amount actually cultivated. More than 
 this cannot be secured by any combination 
 among the proprietors within this tract, since, 
 if a higher rent were demanded, it would be- 
 come the interest of every cultivator to resort 
 to lands of the next grade of productiveness, 
 namely, those within the 22-bushel tract, which 
 could be had without rent. 
 
 This rent of two bushels will not, it should 
 be observed, be paid for all the land (say a 
 acres) within the first-described tract, but only 
 for so much of it as is actually required for 
 cultivation (say x acres) to meet the existing 
 demand for wheat. All the persons in the 
 combination, those whose lands are cultivated 
 and those whose lands are not, will have to 
 divide among themselves the aggregate sum 
 (2 X bushels) so obtained, no single proprietor 
 securing so much as two bushels an acre for all 
 of his individual estate. Each individual pro- 
 prietor will then receive for each acre of liis 
 
40 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 land the following rent : i^i^n^M! Should one 
 owner try to overreach the others by rentmg 
 his own land privately, in contravention of the 
 agreement, the combination would at once be 
 broken, competition would set in, and rents 
 would fall to the minimum. 
 
 Such a combination is, of course, conceiv- 
 able ; yet it would be wholly impracticable 
 if any considerable number of proprietors 
 were concerned. That the combination should 
 be extended downwards, to include not only 
 the proprietors of the next grade of land, 
 the 22-bushel tract, but also those of the 20- 
 bushel tract, and even of the lowest grade, 
 the 18-bushel tract, for which otherwise no 
 rent would be paid, but which, in the attempt 
 to escape competition, would have to be 
 brought within the combination, their owners 
 becoming entitled to a share of the profits, and 
 that thus a monopoly should be established 
 governing the price of wheat, would mani- 
 festly involve a thousand-fold the difficulties 
 which would attend the formation of a com- 
 bination to control the rent of lands all of the 
 same grade. I am not aware that in the his- 
 tory of mankind such a combination has ever 
 anywhere been made and maintained; and 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF RENT. 41 
 
 there seems little reason for appreliending such 
 a combination in the future. 
 
 But what individual owners could not do, 
 Government may. There are instances of rents 
 paid in new countries, as in Australia, while 
 yet all even of the best lands were not taken 
 up. This phenomenon, which several writers 
 have mistakenly adduced as if it were in con- 
 tradiction of Eicardo's law of rent, has been due 
 to the fact that all available lands were held 
 by the Government, which was thus able to 
 fix a monopoly price. 
 
 Now, under monopoly, price is wholly cut 
 away from cost of production. It becomes 
 purely a question of demand. What price shall 
 be paid, — for Avheat, for example, — whether 
 one dollar, or five, or fifty, will depend on how 
 much consumers, who must get it, have with 
 which to purchase it. Up to the limit of the 
 absolute exhaustion of the resources of pur- 
 chasers, price may be carried by the force of 
 monopoly, and into that price, as Professor 
 Cairnes has so well shown,^ rent does enter. 
 
 1 **In the ordinary case of agi'icultural rent, the relation 
 of rent to price is not that of cause to effect, but of effect to 
 cause ; rent, that is to say, is the consequence, not the cause, 
 of the high price of agricultural products. ... On the other 
 
42 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 Such would be tlie effect upon rent, and upon 
 the price of produce, of universal land monop- 
 oly. The matter is not, however, of great prac- 
 tical interest, inasmuch as a monopoly of land, 
 in any proper sense of the term, rarely exists 
 over any considerable territory ; and were it to 
 be established, even over large regions, its ef- 
 fects would be kept down within narrow limits 
 unless the importation of food were forbidden. 
 
 2. The doctrine of rent, as we have stated 
 it, assumes not only an active competition 
 among land-owners, but also an active com- 
 petition between land owners and cultivators 
 as classes, and, still further, an active competi- 
 tion throughout the cultivating class itself, each 
 cultivator seeking his own interests as against 
 those of any and every other. 
 
 It is implied that the landlord, on his part, 
 will unflinchingly demand all the rent which 
 the excess of produce over that of the no-rent 
 lands will allow the cultivators to pay ; and 
 that he will exact this, if need be, at the cost 
 
 hand, in the special cases of rent referred to, in the case, 
 e. g., of the unoccupied Lands of a colony, — rent is, not the 
 effect, but the cause of price. 
 
 " The price of corn rises here because the Government de- 
 mands a rent. In the ordinary case the landlord demands a 
 rent because the price of corn is high." 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 43 
 
 of driving old tenants from the soil, not even 
 giving favor to age, infirmity, or ajBfliction. 
 
 On the part of the cultivator, it is implied 
 that he will pursue his interest with unfailmg 
 intelligence and unflagging zeal, hesitating not 
 to raise the rent upon his fellows by overbid- 
 ding them ; hesitating not to crowd himself into 
 the place of any other cultivator, should a gain 
 appear therein ; hesitating not, for any senti- 
 mental reason, to abandon his own farm, his 
 own home, his native country even, and seek 
 his interest elsewhere, with absolute indiffer- 
 ence to everything but an economic benefit. 
 
 The barest statement of these conditions 
 shows that Eicardo's law does not furnish a 
 formula by which the compensation to be paid 
 for the cultivation of any given piece of land 
 can be determined in advance. The law is 
 only true hypothetically, and the conditions 
 taken for the purpose nowhere exist, in their 
 theoretical completeness. The United States 
 and Ireland are probably the only two con- 
 siderable countries in which rents closely ap- 
 proximating true competitive rents have been 
 habitually paid. This fact does not deprive 
 the economic law of rent of its significance 
 and value. No projectile describes a perfect 
 
44 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 parabola ; yet tlie artillerist never fails to have 
 reference to the law of the projectile, while 
 pointing his piece. 
 
 I have said that the United States and Ire- 
 land are probably the only considerable coun- 
 tries ^ in which true competitive rents have 
 been habitually paid. The similarity of action, 
 in this respect, in these two countries, has been 
 due to altogether different causes, and has, 
 through affecting widely different material in 
 the two cases, produced altogether different re- 
 sults. In the United States, the mobility of 
 the population, their quick intelligence, their 
 almost Ishmaelitish proclivity to change of 
 place; the utter absence of popular notions 
 regarding favors to be given in trade, or con- 
 cessions to be made to classes supposed to be 
 helpless and dependent ; the cheapness of lands 
 within the area of settlement, and the standing 
 offer, by the Government, of boundless tracts of 
 good land along the frontier, free of charge, 
 
 1 Professor de Laveleye speaks of the rents exacted by the 
 small owners of land in certain districts of Belgium from 
 those who are so unfortunate as to become their tenants, as 
 true "rack rents," characterized by a severity of extortion 
 rarely known elsewhere. But the area to which this state 
 of things applies does not require a qualification of the 
 already guarded statement in the text. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 45 
 
 upon the sole condition of actual personal occu- 
 pation and cultivation; and, lastly, the tradi- 
 tional character of American agriculture, which 
 up to this point in our history has been of a very 
 superficial character,^ involving comparatively 
 
 1 In an article in the " Princeton Review" of 1882, I ven- 
 tured on the following vindication of that system of cultivation 
 which has elicited so many expressions of disapproval from 
 European tourists in America, and even from the self-consti- 
 tuted guardians of our agricultural interests at home. " The 
 American people, finding themselves on a continent containing 
 an almost limitless breadth of arable land, of fair average 
 fertility, having little accumulated capital and many urgent 
 occasions for every unit of labor power they could exert, 
 have elected — and in doing so they are, I make bold to say, 
 fully justified, on sound economical principles — to regard 
 the land as practically of no value, and labor as of high 
 value ; have, in pursuance of this theory of the case, syste- 
 matically cropped their fields on the principle of obtaining 
 the largest crops with the least expenditure of labor, limiting 
 their improvements to what was required for the immediate 
 purpose specified, and caring little about returning to the 
 soil any equivalent for the properties taken from it by the 
 crops of each successive year. What has been returned has 
 been only the manure generated incidentally to the support 
 of the live stock needed to work the farm. In that which 
 is for the time the great wheat and corn region of the United 
 States, the fields are, as a rule, cropped continuously, with- 
 out fertilization, year after year, decade after decade, until 
 their fertility sensibly declines. 
 
 "Decline under this regimen it must, sooner or later, later 
 or sooner, according to the crop and according to the degree 
 
46 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 little expenditure for the benefit of tlie soil 
 beyond the requirements of the annual crop, 
 
 of original strength in tlie soil. Resort must then be had 
 to new fields of virgin freshness, which, with us in the 
 United States, has always meant ' The West.' When Profes- 
 sor Johnston published his ' ISTotes on North America, ' in 1851, 
 the granary of the continent had already moved from the 
 flats of the lower St. Lawrence to the Mississippi Yalley, the 
 north and south line which divided the wheat product of 
 the United States into two equal parts being approximately 
 the line of the 82d meridian. In 1860, it was the 85th ; 
 in 1870, the 88th ; in 1880, the 89th. 
 
 " Meanwhile, what becomes of the regions over Avhich this 
 shadow of partial exhaustion passes, like an eclipse, in its 
 westward movement ? The answer is to be read in the con- 
 dition of New England to-day. A part of the agricultural 
 population is maintained in raising upon limited soils the 
 smaller crops, garden vegetables and orchard fruits, and pro- 
 ducing butter, milk, poultry, and eggs for the supply of the 
 cities and manufacturing towns which had their origin in 
 the flourishing days of agriculture, which have grown with 
 the age of the communities in which they were planted, and 
 which, having been well founded when the decadence of 
 agriculture begins, flourish the more on this account, inas- 
 much as a second part of the agricultural population, not 
 choosing to follow the westward movement of the grain cul- 
 ture, are ready with their rising sons and daughters to enter 
 the mill and factory. Still another part of the agricultural 
 population gradually becomes occupied in the higher and 
 more careful culture of the cereal crops on the better portion 
 of the former breadth of arable land, the less eligible fields 
 being allowed to spring up in brush and woods ; deeper 
 ploughing and better drainage are resorted to ; fertilizers are 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 47 
 
 except as to expenditures of a constructive or 
 mechanical nature, thus leaving the question of 
 "unexhausted improvements," between tenant 
 and landlord, a very simple one, — all these 
 causes have combined in the United States to 
 bring actual and theoretical rent close together. 
 
 No landlord here would hesitate to demand 
 the utmost rent which he thought the tenant 
 would pay; nor would any degree of popular 
 odium attend a change of tenants, made solely 
 on the ground that the new-comer offered more 
 for the privilege of cultivation. It would be 
 held that it was the landlord's right to get the 
 full value of his land and to do whatever 
 should be necessary to that end; while in a 
 country where nine and a half millions of the 
 native population live in other States than 
 those in which they were born, any effort to 
 
 now employed to "bring up and to keep up the pristine fer- 
 tility of the soil. And thus begins the systematic agricul- 
 ture of an old State. . . . 
 
 "It is in the way described that Americans have dealt 
 with the soil opened to them by treaty or by purchase. And 
 I have no hesitation in saying that posterity will decide, first, 
 that it was both economically justifiable and politically for- 
 tunate that this should be done ; and, secondly, that what 
 has been done was accomplished with singular enterprise, 
 prudence, patience, intelligence, and skill," 
 
48 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 arouse indignation, or even pity, at the specta- 
 cle of an evicted family would be ludicrously 
 futile. Here, then, we have competitive rents 
 nearly in their fulness, the normal operation 
 of the principle of self-interest being only re- 
 strained by that degree of ignorance and inertia 
 which may be found among the most enlight- 
 ened and enterprising peoples. 
 
 In England, however, the very country of 
 Bicardo, competitive rents have never been 
 generally exacted. Here we find sentiments of 
 mutual obligation between landlord and tenant, 
 sentiments having a political or a social origin, 
 entering to modify profoundly the operation 
 of purely economic forces. " The rent of agri- 
 cultural land," says Professor Thorold Eogers, 
 " is seldom the maximum annual value of the 
 occupancy ; in many cases, is considerably be- 
 low such an amount." Not only are the land- 
 lord's own instincts of acquisition in general 
 tempered by personal good-will between himself 
 and his tenant, but an imperious public senti- 
 ment would protect the tenant against an un- 
 duly exacting landlord, to the extent of the 
 social proscription of the offending party. 'No 
 English gentleman could crowd an industrious 
 tenant, who had been long upon the estate, out 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 49 
 
 of liis holding, to admit a stranger, without 
 having the whole parish or the whole county 
 crying shame upon him. 
 
 By the force of sentiments like these, the 
 normal operation of the principle of self-inter- 
 est in dealing with the land is, in England, so 
 far restrained that no inconsiderable part of 
 what might, by Kicardo's law, be exacted in 
 rent, remains unclaimed in the hands of the 
 occupier, the tenant farmer. Upon the Conti- 
 nent of Europe, competitive rents are not even 
 the rule, to which exception is made by virtue 
 of such causes as have been indicated. In 
 general, custom determines the amount of rent ; 
 and while custom has always a certain refer- 
 ence to the comparative productive advantages 
 of land, it is the universal admission of all 
 writers, whether liberal or conservative, upon 
 this subject, that it has the effect, supported, as 
 it is, by feelings of personal good- will and by a 
 public sentiment which recognizes and is pre- 
 pared to enforce the obligation of the noble 
 and wealthy classes to be considerate and mer- 
 ciful in dealing with the peasantry, to cause a 
 divergence, often a very wide divergence, from 
 competitive rents, always in favor of the culti- 
 vator. So strong is custom, in controlling the 
 4 
 
50 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 actions of men in dealing with the land, that 
 over large portions of Continental Europe, the 
 rents, consisting generally of a share of the 
 produce, are not changed ^ from generation to 
 generation, notwithstanding the growth of pop- 
 ulation, sending cultivation down to soils of 
 lower and still lower fertility. It is true that 
 the landlord gains through the enhanced value 
 of his share of the produce ; but it is also true 
 that the cultivator realizes a large gain (of 
 which by the Eicardian law he would have 
 been deprived) through the enhanced value of 
 so much of the produce as remains to himself. 
 
 It is not necessary at this time to enter, 
 merely for illustration of our principle, upon so 
 large and so difficult a question as that of rents 
 in Ireland. Here in the past have been seen the 
 full effects of competition, — competition, not, 
 as in the United States, between classes sub- 
 stantially equal in intelligence and freedom of 
 
 1 Indeed, it is, as Sir Henry Maine remarks, "all but 
 certain that the idea of taking the highest obtainable rent for 
 land is relatively of very modern origin. The rent of land 
 corresponds to the price of goods ; but doubtless was infi- 
 nitely slower in corresponding to economical law, since the 
 impression of a brotherhood in the ownership of land still 
 survived, when goods had long since become the subject of 
 individual property." — Village Communities, p. 198. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 51 
 
 movement; competition, not, as in England, 
 restrained by kindly sentiments and conserva- 
 tive usages ; ^ but a competition between a land- 
 lord class, few in numbers, rich in accumulated 
 means, thoroughly united among themselves as 
 the result of generations of suppressed warfare, 
 and cherishing towards the peasantry, not the 
 feelings natural to the lord of the soil, but the 
 fears, the jealousies, the hatreds, that are born 
 of race and religious antagonisms, and, on the 
 other part, a tenant class, whose numbers were 
 largely in excess of the capabilities of the land 
 to support, and who were, in character, ignorant, 
 superstitious, and improvident, their very vir- 
 tues of generosity and hopefulness contributing 
 to further disqualify them for the competition 
 which they were compelled to enter upon for 
 the occupation of the soil. 
 
 Two minor assumptions, involved in Eicardo's 
 law, are : (1.) The indifference of the landlord 
 to the possibility of waste being committed by 
 the tenant, and (2.) The indifference of the 
 
 1 "The three rents are : Eack-rent from a person of a 
 strange tribe ; a fair rent, frmn one of the tribe ; and the 
 stipulated rent, which is paid equally by the tribe and the 
 strange tribe." — Senchus Mor, quoted by Maine, Village 
 Communities, p. 187. 
 
52 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 tenant towards the value of tlie improvements 
 he may have incorporated with the soil. Of 
 course, neither of these assumptions is even 
 supposed to correspond to the facts. They 
 are made merely for convenience of reasoning 
 and simplicity of illustration. 
 
 Inasmuch as wanton malice, greed, or mere 
 neglect, on the part of the tenant may impair, in 
 a greater or smaller degree and more or less 
 permanently, the fertility of land, it might 
 readily happen that, contrary to the supposition 
 made, the proprietor of land of the highest 
 grade would prefer to have his land remain 
 unoccupied rather than admit a distrusted ten- 
 ant on a minimum rent. In this way the actual 
 operation of the principle of self-interest might 
 be made to differ in some degree from what we 
 have described as the normal operation of that 
 principle. Lands of this class might be held 
 out of cultivation until the accumulating stress 
 of the principle of "diminishing returns " upon 
 the cultivators of the higher-grade lands led to 
 the offer of a rent for these lands which, though 
 low, could not yet properly be called a mini- 
 mum rent (to be treated as nil), being substan- 
 tial enough to constitute a sort of guarantee to 
 the proprietor, or, to put it in another form, 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF KENT. 53 
 
 being so far considerable as to make him think 
 it worth while to take some risk regarding 
 waste. 
 
 On the other hand, the tenant is never likely 
 to be so free to move to other land as is assumed 
 in the economic doctrine of rent, inasmuch as 
 the existence of " unexhausted improvements " 
 wrought by him in the soil is likely to hold 
 him in his place, with a greater or less degree 
 of tenacity, inducing him to remain where he 
 is, even though obtaining somewhat less annu- 
 ally by present exertions than he might in 
 another locality, rather than permanently sac- 
 rifice the benefit of his improvements by a 
 removal. 
 
 I do not know that any other qualification of 
 the Eicardian doctrine of rent, arising from the 
 nature of the assumptions which underlie it, 
 needs to be expressed in order to place us in a 
 position to examine the views of recent writers 
 regarding the actual influence of rent on the 
 distribution of wealth. 
 
 It will be observed that the degree of this 
 influence must depend, primarily, on the lower 
 limit of cultivation, what economists commonly 
 call the margin of cultivation. If the range of 
 
64 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 net productiveness between the soils actually 
 under cultivation at the same time, for the supply 
 of the same market, be narrow, no matter how 
 great the average productiveness of the whole 
 body of lands, the amount paid in rent will be 
 small. As that range increases, even though 
 the average net productiveness should decline, 
 and decline greatly, the amount paid in rents 
 would increase. 
 
 Suppose six lots of land, of 1,000 acres each, 
 supplying a given market, to produce, severally, 
 40, 39, 38, 37, 36, and 35 bushels per acre, the 
 amount of rent realized therefrom, according 
 to the formula of Eicardo, will be 15,000 bush- 
 els, out of a total production of 225,000 bushels, 
 
 or tV 
 
 Now suppose that the same lots produce, 
 severally, but 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, and 20 bushels. 
 Here we should have an aggregate production 
 of but 150,000 bushels, and yet the amount 
 of -rent would rise to 30,000 bushels, reaching 
 -| of the produce. If, again, we were to assume 
 that the lots produced, severally, 30, 27, 24, 21, 
 18, and 15 bushels, we should find the aggre- 
 gate product sinking to 135,000 bushels ; but 
 of this not less than 45,000 bushels, or J the 
 crop, would go as rent. 
 
THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 55 
 
 '' Eent is always," said Mr. Eicardo, " tlie 
 difference between the produce obtained by 
 the employment of two equal quantities of 
 capital and labor. . . . 
 
 "Whatever diminishes the inequality of 
 produce obtained from successive portions of 
 capital employed on the same or on new land, 
 tends to lower rent ; and whatever increases 
 that inequality necessarily produces an oppo- 
 site effect and tends to raise it." 
 
 The range tetween the higher and the lower 
 limit of cultivation we see, therefore, is of prime 
 importance in the discussion of the influence 
 of rent upon the distribution of wealth, as it 
 determines the actual amount of the produce 
 which, under the Eicardian formula, will go 
 into the hands of the landlord simply for the 
 privilege of applying labor and capital to the 
 land. 
 
 Upon what we shall ascertain as to the ex- 
 isting facts and the manifest tendencies of 
 economical forces in this matter of the margin 
 of cultivation, so called, will depend our decision 
 whether M. Leroy-Beaulieu is right in declaring 
 that rent has ceased to be of any importance 
 in the distribution of wealth; or Mr. George 
 is right in declaring that rent is a deadly evil. 
 
56 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 which is every day drawing nearer and nearer 
 to the vital organs of the State ; or, thirdly, 
 whether both these gentlemen are not wrong, 
 the one in unduly disparaging, the other in 
 unduly magnifying, the importance of rent in 
 the distribution of wealth, under modern eco- 
 nomic conditions. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 57 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 
 
 I SHALL not attempt even to name all those 
 writers who have, at one time or another, from 
 one quarter or another, assailed the economic 
 doctrine of rent, as it was stated and illustrated 
 in the last chapter. I shall ask the reader's 
 attention to the arguments of but three writers, 
 M. Bastiat, Mr. Henry C. Carey, of our own 
 country, and M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the present 
 editor of the " Economiste Eranqais " and the 
 successor of Michel Chevalier, as professor of 
 political economy in the College de France. 
 
 BASTIAT. 
 
 It may be assumed that the reader is familiar 
 with the essays and popular tracts of that in- 
 genious and eloquent socio-economical writer, 
 Frederic Bastiat. His argument against the 
 accepted doctrine of rent will be found in 
 
58 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 chapters viii. and ix. of his "Harmonies of 
 Political Economy." 
 
 Bastiat's argument against the doctrine of 
 rent is supplemental to his attempted demon- 
 stration of the proposition that, not the gifts 
 of nature, such as are found in soil and climate, 
 not even the high mental or muscular endow- 
 ments of individuals, but human efforts, are 
 the creative cause of value. 
 
 Bastiat wrote especially in opposition to the 
 communistic orators and pamphleteers of his 
 day, that is, of the period of the Eevolution 
 of 1848. He wrote with a strong political 
 intention, and discussed economical principles 
 always with a side glance at the existing social 
 situation. Could he have satisfactorily demon- 
 strated the proposition just stated, it is evi- 
 dent he would have achieved an easy triumph 
 over his antagonists. Wealth, the substance of 
 which value is the attribute, would be found 
 only in the hands of those who had created it ; 
 than which what could be more reasonable and 
 righteous ? 
 
 But against the view that human effort is 
 the sole and sufficient creative cause of value, 
 Bastiat found arrayed not only the compact 
 opinion of all economists of reputation, but also 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF EENT. 59 
 
 a great number and variety of familiar in- 
 stances in which the possession of value is seen 
 to be either irrespective of, or altogether out of 
 proportion to, the human effort bestowed. 
 
 Blocked thus in his attempted progress in 
 this direction, Bastiat broke through a passage 
 for himself, and secured at least a seeming^ and 
 temporary triumph by introducing into the dis- 
 cussion of value the equivocal word " service." ^ 
 
 Now the word " service " may signify either 
 personal exertions made in another's behalf, or 
 acts, not necessarily onerous, by which another 
 person is served or benefited. In other words, 
 service may mean either the taking of 'pains by 
 a person rendering the service, or the samng of 
 pains to the person receiving the service. 
 
 This equivocal word admirably suited Bas- 
 tiat's controversial exigencies. It was easy 
 enough to prove that value depended upon ser- 
 vice, in the sense of saving pains to the person 
 purchasing, because, clearly, no one would pur- 
 chase an article unless pains were saved to him 
 thereby, — that is, unless he obtained the article 
 with less pains to himself, with less of effort and 
 
 1 On Bastiat's use of this word, Professor Cairnes has 
 commented with great and not undeserved severity. See 
 his Essay on Bastiat. 
 
60 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 sacrifice, than would be necessary in producing 
 it for himself. On the other hand, Bastiat, 
 having thus established his proposition that 
 value originates in service, and that the quan- 
 tum of value is proportional to the quantum of 
 service, turned about to his popular constitu- 
 ency only to use this juggling word, " service," 
 in the sense of the taking of pains by the person 
 selling. If a man, he would ask, only gets for 
 his product that which is proportioned to the 
 exertions he has made, what more could be 
 asked ? Who will challenge the equity of such 
 an exchange ? 
 
 It seems astonishing that a mere equiwque, 
 like that which runs through Bastiat's whole 
 theory of value, should have completely im- 
 posed on American economists, one of the most 
 meritorious of whom has written : "I had 
 scarcely read a dozen pages in that remarkable 
 book when, closing it and giving myself to an 
 hour's reflection, the field of political economy, 
 in all its outlines and landmarks, lay before 
 my mind, just as it does to-day. . . . From 
 that hour political economy has been to me a 
 new science." And this author elsewhere at- 
 tributes especial influence over his mind to 
 Bastiat's views on Value and Land, on each of 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 61 
 
 which the witty, subtile, eloquent rrenchman 
 was about as far wrong as it is possible for an 
 eloquent, subtile, and witty Frenchman to be. 
 
 At home, certainly, Bastiat never took rank 
 as a constructive economist, though nowhere 
 were the delicacy of the wit and the pungency 
 of the satire with which he discussed many 
 false and dangerous social and industrial theo- 
 ries so fully appreciated or so highly relished 
 as in his native country. 
 
 But while, as a serious contribution to the 
 theory of value, Bastiat' s conception of eco- 
 nomic " services " — which, as we have said, in 
 some places he defines as the saving of pains 
 to the person receiving, as distinguished from 
 the taking of pains by the person rendering, so 
 that the term in this use becomes almost equiv- 
 alent to the ordinary meaning of the word 
 " demand " — is utterly without significance, it 
 is perhaps even more surprising that his writ- 
 ings on this theme should have had the slight- 
 est degree even of present popular influence 
 in quieting disaffection regarding the rights of 
 property. For let it be conceded that value 
 is exactly according to the " service " rendered, 
 that is, the pains saved to the person receiv- 
 ing the service, has not the proUtaire wit 
 
62 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 enough, when that wit is quickened by the 
 sense of wrong or the feeling of hardship, to 
 ask, Ah ! but how comes it that this man is in 
 a position to render me so easily a service which 
 I must repay at so great a cost to me ? 
 
 It is indeed true that the man who sells me 
 anything renders me, in one sense, a service. 
 I should not buy that thing unless I wanted 
 it ; unless it were more useful to me than that 
 I part with in exchange for it. That I buy 
 of this person, and not of another, is a proof, 
 or at least creates a strong presumption, that 
 I buy at a lower price, or with a smaller ex- 
 penditure of time and trouble in purchasing, 
 or think I do so, than if I had bought of 
 another. So far he has rendered me a service. 
 Yet, if there is to be question respecting the 
 equitableness of existing social arrangements, it 
 is still possible, and reasonable as well, for me 
 to go behind the situation, in which it is ad- 
 mitted there is a fair and free exchange of 
 equivalent " services," and inquire how it hap- 
 pened that the two parties came severally into 
 the positions in which that exchange finds 
 them. 
 
 A receiver of stolen goods sells me something 
 that I stand greatly in need of, at a very low 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 63 
 
 price. Strictly as between liim and me, as 
 trading persons, lie doubtless renders me a ser- 
 vice, the full equivalent of the money I pay to 
 him ; but as between society and him, and 
 even between him and me as a member of 
 society, there is an account still open that has 
 to be adjusted. 
 
 A highwayman points a pistol at my head, 
 but offers to spare me if I shall give him $500, 
 which I proceed to do with the greatest alacrity. 
 In sparing my life he renders me the highest 
 possible service, one for which I would gladly, 
 were it needful, pay many times $500. Indeed, 
 on no equal payment during my hfe do I so 
 much felicitate myself. Still the question will 
 arise, How came the highwayman to be in a 
 position to do me such a vital service, and, after 
 all, what right has he to what was my $500 ? 
 
 In like manner, while the owner of land who 
 at a certain rent leases to me a few acres on 
 which I may work to raise food for myself and 
 family, undoubtedly does me a great service, as 
 compared with not giving me leave to cultivate 
 it upon any terms whatever, it will still be ra- 
 tional and pertinent for me to inquire, at least 
 under my breath, what business he has with 
 the land, more than I or any one else. Why 
 
64 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 sliould I not have the whole produce of my 
 ten-acre lot without deduction, although I freely 
 confess that I would rather submit to the de- 
 duction than not have it at all ; in other words, 
 that a service, in Bastiat's sense, has been re- 
 ceived by me. 
 
 It will appear that while Bastiat uses the 
 fact of service rendered as, of itself, sufficiently 
 establishing the equitableness of property, the 
 capability of rendering a service, in the ex- 
 tended use which at times he gives to that 
 term, may reside in a man by virtue of 
 possessions most inequitably or even iniqui- 
 tously obtained or retained. Yet Bastiat was 
 so far satisfied with his demonstration of what 
 seemed to him the perfect and indefeasible har- 
 mony of property and justice, that, addressing 
 the owners of property, he exclaims : " You 
 have not intercepted the gifts of God. You 
 have received them gratuitously, it is true, 
 at the hands of nature; but you have also 
 gratuitously transferred them to your brethren 
 without receiving anything. They have also 
 acted in the same way towards you ; and the 
 only things which have been reciprocally com- 
 pensated are physical and intellectual efforts, 
 toils undergone, dangers braved, skill exercised, 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 65 
 
 privations submitted to, pains taken, services 
 rendered and received;" and lie states, with 
 especial emphasis and distinctness, the proposi- 
 tion that "Every man enjoys gratuitously all 
 the utilities furnished or created by nature, on 
 condition of taking the trouble to appropriate 
 them, or of returning an equivalent service to 
 those who render him the service of taking that 
 trouble for him." 
 
 "Taking the trouble to appropriate them," 
 is good. One can imagine the sardonic smile 
 with which Mr. Jay Gould would receive and 
 accept the congratulations of the eloquent 
 optimist, upon the benefits he had conferred 
 upon mankind by "taking the trouble to ap- 
 propriate" the utilities furnished or created 
 by nature to the extent of a cool hundred 
 millions. 
 
 I have said that M. Bastiat's argument 
 against the economic doctrine of rent is sup- 
 plemental to his attempted demonstration that 
 all the gifts of nature, of every kind, are abso- 
 lutely gratuitous. In dealing with the special 
 case of landed property, he still relies upon the 
 potency of the word " services " to establish the 
 righteousness of the institution. " It is," he says, 
 " rigorously exact to say that the proprietor of 
 5 
 
66 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 land is, after all, the proprietor only of a value 
 which he has created, of services which he has 
 rendered ; and what property can be more 
 legitimate ? It is property created at no one's 
 expense, and neither intercepts nor taxes the 
 gifts of God." 
 
 The exceptional difficulty, however, of meet- 
 ing manifest facts regarding the rent of land, 
 and the universal consent of economists that 
 there is, on all but the lowest grade of soils, 
 an excess of produce, a clear surplus, above the 
 cost of production, seemed to require of M. 
 Bastiat that he should here make a distinct and 
 special demonstration of his proposition con- 
 cerning the relation of services to value. Con- 
 sequently, we have, in the chapter on Landed 
 Property, a laborious attempt to vindicate that 
 species of property on the ground of natural 
 right, in opposition to the view of nearly all 
 publicists, founded on the current economic 
 doctrine, that private property in land is a 
 privilege conferring unearned advantages upon 
 individuals, only to be justified by the public 
 benefits resulting from the private cultivation 
 and improvement of the soil. 
 
 M. Bastiat enters upon his task with zeal 
 and courage. He denounces the statement of 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF EENT. 67 
 
 Eicardo, McCuUocli, and Senior, of Say, Gamier, 
 and Blanqui, that rent is paid for the use of 
 the original and indestructible powers of the 
 soil, declaring that if rent have this origin, then, 
 indeed, in the language of Proudhon, property 
 is robbery, — a dangerous admission in the land 
 of Frenchmen ! M. Bastiat, however, entertains 
 no doubt of his own competency to establish a 
 wholly independent basis for rent, which shall 
 make its payment consist with his glowing 
 theory of the Mutuality of Services. 
 
 The main argument of this chapter of the 
 Economic Harmonies we shall meet hereafter, 
 in better form, when reviewing Mr. Carey's 
 discussion of the same subject It is directed 
 to the demonstration of the proposition that the 
 actual value of land does not exceed the accu- 
 mulated labor that has been spent in giving it 
 value ; the inference being that, therefore, noth- 
 ing but labor can have entered to give land 
 any portion of its value. We shall see how 
 delusive is this mode of demonstration. What 
 is especially noticeable in Bastiat's reasoning 
 is that, in enumerating the forms of human 
 effort which have given value to the land, he 
 does not confine himself to the labors of indi- 
 vidual proprietors upon their respective estates, 
 
68 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 but is continually adducing the efforts of the 
 community, what M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls " so- 
 cial labor," that is, labor expended in building 
 bridges and roads, labor expended in rearing 
 towns for manufacture and trade which shall 
 furnish a market for the produce of the farms, 
 labor expended in promoting general interests 
 and in preserving the public peace. 
 
 Now, so far as it is the labor of the commu- 
 nity, social labor, which has given value to the 
 land, the individual proprietor is in possession 
 of wealth which he has not created. That 
 wealth, being in so far due to the exertions of 
 the community, should, on M. Bastiat's princi- 
 ple, be common to all. And thus the outcome 
 of this labored defence of landed property on 
 grounds of natural right is to exhibit the owner 
 of land in the exclusive enjoyment of a value 
 derived from the labor of others ! 
 
 In a vain effort to avert this conclusion, 
 M. Bastiat falls back upon an argument which 
 may be cited to show the utter incompetence 
 of this brilliant pamphleteer to deal with 
 questions relating to land and its rent. 
 
 " There is here," he says, " no injustice, no 
 exception in favor of landed property. No 
 species of labor, from that of the banker to 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 69 
 
 that of tlie (lay laborer, fails to exhibit the 
 same phenomenon. No one fails to see his 
 remuneration improved by the improvement 
 of the society in which his work is carried on. 
 This action and reaction of the prosperity of 
 each upon the prosperity of all, and vice versa, 
 is the very law of value. . . . The lawyer, the 
 physician, the professor, the artist, the poet, 
 receive a higher remuneration for an equal 
 amount of labor, in proportion as the town or 
 country in which they belong increases in wealth 
 and prosperity." E'ow this is specious : it 
 looks solid; but let us touch it witii a pin. 
 M. Bastiat here represents the owner of the 
 land as working on it, and deriving increased 
 wealth with the increased prosperity and grow- 
 ing numbers of the community ; as, for that 
 matter, do the banker, the lawyer, and the phy- 
 sician. Where, he asks, is the injustice of this ? 
 But suppose the owner of land does not 
 cultivate it. Suppose he is himself a banker, 
 lawyer, or physician, and lets his land to be 
 cultivated by others. Do we not find him, 
 then, receiving two shares, instead of one, out 
 of the general increase of wealth, — one, as 
 banker, lawyer, or physician, through his en- 
 hanced fees or profits ; the other, as landlord, 
 
70 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 through the enhancement of the price of agri- 
 cultural produce ? What right has he, on 
 M. Bastiat's principles, as but one man, to 
 more than one share ? 
 
 But is it said, he receives the second share as 
 the proprietor of the productive power of the 
 labor of the past ; had he invested his means — 
 saved by himself, or derived from some frugal 
 ancestor — in other forms of wealth besides 
 land, he would still, under the conditions as- 
 sumed, receive an equal benefit from the gen- 
 eral prosperity ? No, no ! that will not do. 
 M. Bastiat, if, in his own judgment, he has 
 demonstrated anything, has proven conclu- 
 sively that the power of the labor of the past 
 to purchase present labor is continuously on 
 the declme. With great emphasis and much 
 iteration he lays down the general proposition 
 that '' one of the effects of progress is to di- 
 minish the value of all existing instruments." 
 Under this law, the reward or return to the 
 landlord should, if it be true that land owes 
 its value solely to capitahzed labor, continually 
 decline. That it does not decline, is due to 
 the fact established by Eicardo, that, on all but 
 the lowest grade of soils, there is a surplus 
 above the cost of cultivation, which, through 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 71 
 
 the progress of society and the multiplication 
 of the numbers of the community, tends to 
 increase, and which, so far as economic forces 
 alone are concerned, goes into the hands of the 
 proprietor, as compensation for the use of 
 the natural advantages of the land. 
 
 But it is in his " Brother Jonathan " illus- 
 tration, so often quoted or referred to, that we 
 are made most painfully to realize this gifted 
 writer's incapacity for dealing with questions 
 relating to land. In this somewhat protracted 
 study, he supposes Brother Jonathan, " a labo- 
 rious water-carrier of JSTew York," to emigrate 
 to Arkansas, where he buys land from the Gov- 
 ernment at a dollar an acre. This price, how- 
 ever, M. Bastiat tells us, as if anxious to shut 
 himself off from any possible explanation of 
 his subsequent misconceptions, represents only 
 the value of the improvements which Grovern- 
 ment has already made, of the security it is 
 prepared to afford to occupants, and of the 
 mail facilities it has provided. 
 
 M. Bastiat proceeds to represent Brother 
 Jonathan as taking his first crop to market and 
 demanding for it something more than the 
 recompense of his present and former labor, 
 upon the express ground that "English and 
 
72 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 Frencli economists had assured him " that, in 
 the character of a proprietor of land, he was 
 entitled to derive a profit from the productive 
 and indestructible powers of the soil. But 
 here he fails, the merchant declining to pay 
 more than the cost of producing the crop. 
 
 M. Bastiat next represents Brother Jona- 
 than as negotiating with a would-be cultivator 
 as to the rent of his farm. Again Brother 
 Jonathan claims something for the use of his 
 farm over and above the proper interest of the 
 sum which would be necessary to bring another 
 lot of Arkansas land into as good condition as 
 his own, alleging that he is authorized to do so 
 "according to the principles of Eicardo and 
 Proudhon;" and again he meets with failure, 
 the tenant offering him a rent which only cor- 
 responds to interest at current rates, upon the 
 capital actually invested in the soil. 
 
 Still, a third time, M. Bastiat depicts Brother 
 Jonathan, when trying not to lease but to sell 
 his farm, encountering the disappointment of 
 the expectations which had been inspired in 
 him by the economists. 
 
 " It is needless to say," goes the story, " that 
 no one would give him more for it than it cost 
 himself. In vain he cited Eicardo, and repre- 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTKINE OF RENT. 73 
 
 sented the inherent value of the indestructible 
 powers of the soil. The answer always was, 
 * There are other lands close by ; ' and these few 
 words put an extinguisher on his exactions and 
 his illusions." 
 
 Now, can one readily believe that a writer 
 so thoroughly honest in purpose as M. Bastiat 
 could so egregiously misrepresent and misstate 
 the doctrine he had chosen to combat ? 
 
 It is of the very essence of the Eicardian law 
 of rent that there is a body of no-rent lands 
 which, by reason of their low fertility or their 
 distance from market, only return the cost of 
 cultivation, leaving no surplus ^ whatever to go 
 
 i Adam Smith says : " The most desert moors in Norway 
 and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of 
 which the milk and the increase are always more than suffi- 
 cient, not only to maintain all the labor necessary for tend- 
 ing them and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or 
 owner of the herd or flock, but to afford some small rent to 
 the landlord." 
 
 Eicardo doubts this, believing that "in every country, 
 from the rudest to the most refined, there is land of such a 
 quality that it cannot yield a produce more than sufficiently 
 valuable to replace the stock employed upon it, together 
 with the profits ordinary and usual in that country." 
 
 Eicardo is probably right, though the matter is of no 
 consequence, any way, inasmuch as the rent of Scottish or 
 Norwegian "desert moors" is so small, per acre, as to 
 constitute the economical minimum. 
 
74 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 to the proprietor of the land as rent. You can 
 only make an intelligible statement of Eicardo's 
 doctrine by starting with the existence of no- 
 rent lands, since the Eicardian formula measures 
 rent upwards from the no-rent line. 
 
 Yet here M. Bastiat sends Brother Jonathan 
 out to Arkansas, — a region which forty years 
 ago stood in the relation to the markets of the 
 world in which Montana and Idaho now stand, 
 — a region where, by his own supposition, un- 
 cultivated and unappropriated lands lie on every 
 side ; and here, in this very position, on lands 
 which are precisely the no-rent lands of the 
 Eicardian formula, he makes Brother Jonathan 
 claim a price for his produce above the cost of 
 production, on the ground that the English and 
 French economists have assured him that he 
 is entitled to it on account of the original and 
 indestructible properties of the soil. Again, he 
 makes Brother Jonathan claim a rent above 
 the interest of his investment, upon the author- 
 ity of " Eicardo and Proudhon," and still again 
 makes the Arkansas settler claim, for the same 
 reason, a selling price in excess of the value of 
 his improvements ; and all this, while the sim- 
 ple, unmistakable fact is that, according to the 
 doctrine which he is misrepresenting, the lands 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 75 
 
 in question bear neither rent nor price, aside 
 from the condition of an actual investment of 
 capital, and the produce raised thereon must be 
 sold to repay only the cost of production. Such 
 is M. Bastiat's contribution to the philosophy 
 of land and its rent ! 
 
 CAEEY. 
 
 The economic doctrine of rent encountered a 
 more formidable antagonist in Mr. Henry C. 
 Carey, of Philadelphia, who in his work enti- 
 tled ''Political Economy," published m 1837, 
 attacked Eicardo with arguments which he sub- 
 sequently elaborated in his work entitled " The 
 Past, Present, and Future," published in 1848. 
 I shall quote indiscriminately from Mr. Carey's 
 two works, the only difference between the au- 
 thor's views, as developed in the interval of the 
 two publications, being, as stated by himself,^ 
 that in 1837 he was convinced that the theory 
 of Eicardo was "not universally true," while, 
 at the later date, he felt assured that it was 
 "universally false." 
 
 Let us proceed to test the validity of argu- 
 ments which lead to a conclusion so mo- 
 mentous. 
 
 1 In the " Unity of Law." 
 
76 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Mr. Carey's first argument is founded on a 
 "comparison of the cost and value of existing 
 landed capital/' to use liis own phraseology; 
 and will be found in the chapter of that title 
 in his " Political Economy," and in his chapter, 
 "Man and Land," in the work of 1848. 
 
 "There is not," he asserts, "throughout the 
 United States, a county, township, town, or city, 
 that would sell for cost; or one whose rents 
 are equal to the interest upon the labor and 
 capital expended." ^ And he elsewhere draws 
 what he regards as the logical inference from 
 this alleged fact: "If we show that the land 
 heretofore appropriated is not only not worth 
 as much labor as it has cost to produce it in 
 its present condition, but that it could not be 
 reproduced by the labor that its present value 
 would purchase, it will be obvious to the reader 
 that its whole value is due to that which has 
 been applied to its improvement." ^ 
 
 Now, it appears to me that not only is this 
 not "obvious," but that something very like 
 an Irish bull is contained in this demonstration 
 of a great " law " by which the harmony of all 
 human interests is proposed to be established. 
 
 1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 60. 
 
 2 Political Economy, vol. i. p. 102. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 77 
 
 The trouble with Mr. Carey's argument is its 
 superabundance of proof. The effect is much 
 the same as that which sometimes results from 
 the superabundance of powder in charging a 
 gun. 
 
 Had Mr. Carey been able to show that, in 
 any case taken, a county, township, town, or 
 city was worth exactly as much in labor as 
 it had cost, the coincidence of amounts could 
 at least have suggested, if it did not create a 
 proper presumption to that effect, that the 
 labor expended was the cause of the value ex- 
 isting; but when Mr. Carey, with a view to 
 proving his very important proposition, asserts 
 that any farm and any collection of farms has 
 cost more, often far more, than it is worth, he 
 simply affords another instance of that 
 
 "Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself, 
 And falls on the other side." 
 
 Suppose the present value of a piece of land 
 to be represented by 100 units, while the value 
 of the labor it has cost to " produce " the farms 
 found thereon, is represented hf 125. Now, 
 says Mr. Carey, inasmuch as the land is not 
 worth more than 100, while the labor invested 
 in it was worth 125, it is clear that nothing but 
 the labor has entered to give value to the land ! 
 
78 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 But how SO ? What has become of the 25 
 which was in excess of the 100 ? Lost, says 
 Mr. Carey, since, " as labor is improved in its 
 quality by the aid of improved instruments, 
 all previously accumulated capital tends to fall 
 below its cost, in labor." ^ 
 
 Ah ! but if that 25 can be lost and has been 
 lost, how can you show that another 25 has 
 not been lost, and still another 25, through the 
 operation of the same cause ? How can you 
 prove that the 100 of the present value of the 
 land is due, in any part whatever, to the 125 of 
 the value of the labor in the past? 
 
 John Smith's barn has been broken into, over 
 night, by a burglar who sawed a hole through 
 the door to effect his entrance. Mr. Henry 
 Carey, in the interest of justice, appears next 
 morning among the excited throng of neigh- 
 bors, and produces a board taken from James 
 Brown's woodshed, which, though not corre- 
 sponding to the guilty hole in size or shape, is 
 yet large enough, as he explains, to allow just 
 such a piece "to be cut out of it, thus conclu- 
 sively proving James Brown to have been the 
 robber of John Smith's barn ! 
 
 Mr. Eicardo, upon a statement of reasons 
 
 1 Political Economy, vol. 1. p. 35. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 79 
 
 which in their cogency and vigor exact an 
 almost painful assent from every well-ordered 
 mind, demonstrates that the value, at any time, 
 of any piece of improved land is made up of 
 two elements, — one representing, in capitalized 
 form, the sum of its natural advantages, for pro- 
 ductive purposes, over the least favored piece of 
 land (whether less favored by reason of natural 
 infertility, difficulty of cultivation, or distance) 
 contributing to the supply of the same market 
 at the same time; the other representing the 
 present advantages, for productive purposes, 
 acquired by the land in view, through applica- 
 tions of labor and capital in the past. 
 
 Mr. Carey, having established statistically, to 
 his own satisfaction, that the value of the 
 labor and capital so applied exceeds, even 
 greatly exceeds, the present value of all culti- 
 vated lands, deems that he has demonstrated 
 that the first element of Eicardo cannot enter at 
 all into the value of such lands. How, indeed, 
 can it, when there is no room for it, when 
 the subject is already full and more than fitlW^ 
 
 1 Let me reproduce Mr. Carey's words, already quoted : 
 "There is not, throughout the United States, a county, 
 township, town, or city that would sell for cost ; or one 
 whose rents are equal to the interest upon the labor and 
 capital expended." 
 
80 LAND AND ITS EENT, 
 
 More than full : all, there is the rub ! Noth- 
 ing can be more than full, and if there is a 
 surplus in the value of the labor and capi- 
 tal applied to the land, above the present 
 value of the land itself, it follows inevitably 
 that some of that labor and capital have, so far 
 as the present value of the land is concerned, 
 been lost ; but if so much has been lost, why 
 not more ? and if more, why may not Mr. Ei- 
 cardo's first element enter, after all ? 
 
 And this is the vaunted refutation of Eicar- 
 do's law of rent ! 
 
 An argument that breaks down thus, under 
 the slightest strain of hostile pressure, cannot 
 be worth further notice on its own account; 
 yet we may find matter of not a little economi- 
 cal interest in following out the question here 
 raised, as to the relation between what Mr. 
 Carey calls the cost of producing farms and 
 the value of farms when " produced." 
 
 1st. To begin with, all the statements which 
 are made regarding the amount so invested in 
 any country or district are based on compara- 
 tively little information. The statistical data 
 are few and meagre, even for making estimates. 
 Accomplished statisticians, long accustomed to 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 81 
 
 deal with computations relating to agriculture, 
 like Mr. Frederick Purdy,. Mr. Eobert Giffen, 
 Professor Thorold Kogers, or Sir James Caird, 
 would scarcely presume to claim even approxi- 
 mate accuracy for any estimates they might 
 make regarding the amount of labor involved 
 in bringing even a limited agricultural region 
 into its present state of productiveness. 
 
 2d. Again, wholly in addition to the difficulty 
 encountered in estimating the amount of labor 
 involved in bringing a district to its present 
 state of productiveness, would be the difficulty 
 of computing the money value of that labor. 
 While some great works of improvement are 
 effected by bodies of hired laborers working 
 through the year or through the agricultural 
 season, most farm improvements are effected 
 in the off season, when the wages of hired 
 labor are very low, — perhaps only one half 
 what they would be at another period of the 
 year ; and probably the greater part are effected 
 by the labor of the owner or occupier of the 
 land and his family, in fragments of the day 
 which would not otherwise be utilized, or in 
 portions of the year when little or nothing of 
 the current work of the farm can be done. 
 Tn a word, much, very much, of the agri- 
 6 
 
82 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 cultural improvements of a country like the 
 United States, at least, represents no cost at all, 
 in the sense that if the labor power exerted had 
 not been expended in this way, it would not 
 have been put to any economic use. 
 
 3d. It goes almost without saying that the 
 element of interest can properly be introduced 
 into such computations only in respect to a 
 very small proportion of the agricultural in- 
 vestments of capital. 
 
 In general, where capital is applied to agri- 
 culture, it is in the expectation of an immedi- 
 ate improvement of the productive power of 
 the land, the annual increase of the produce 
 being relied upon to furnish, at least the 
 annual interest upon the investment, so that, 
 speaking broadly, in any comparison between 
 the cost and the value of landed property, only 
 the first cost of the improvements effected 
 should be set against the ultimate value added 
 thereby. 
 
 There are cases, of course, where capital is 
 applied to the land in the view alone of a dis- 
 tant increase of value. Here, within moderate 
 limits of time, the inclusion of interest in the 
 computation is not unreasonable. But even 
 here, and even within comparatively brief 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 83 
 
 periods, the application of the principle of 
 geometric progression in the form of com- 
 pound interest is of very doubtful propriety. 
 Geometrical increase is rarely attained and 
 never long maintained in things human. Con- 
 templating an actual instance of geometrical 
 increase within the field of industry, the most 
 unreasonable expectation which can be formed 
 concerning it, is that it will continue. That it 
 should continue long, is not so much unlikely 
 as impossible. 
 
 Sir Archibald Alison, in his discussion of the 
 British Sinking Fund, states that " a penny laid 
 out at compound interest at the birth of our 
 Saviour would in the year 1775 have amounted 
 to a solid mass of gold eighteen hundred times 
 the whole weight of the globe." 
 
 So, doubtless, it might be shown that the 
 value of Adam's first day's work in the Gar- 
 den, properly compounded during six thousand 
 years, would amount to more than the present 
 value of all the lands of the world, and conse- 
 quently that all the work that has been done 
 since, in bringing the soil under cultivation, has 
 merely been thrown away ! 
 
 The incredibility of geometric increase 
 through any considerable period of time can- 
 
84 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 not be too strongly impressed upon the stu- 
 dent of economics. The produce of a single 
 acre of wheat, sown over and over, for four- 
 teen years, would cover all the solid land on 
 this planet. The spawn of certain fish would 
 suffice in even fewer years, if reproduction 
 went on in geometrical progression, to fill to 
 the brim the basin of every pond, lake, river, 
 sea, and ocean. 
 
 Hence we see the utter inconsequence of 
 computations relating to human afi'airs into 
 which compound interest is allowed to enter, 
 except in strict subordination to common- 
 sense. Probably there is no way in which a 
 man can so quickly and so conclusively show 
 himself unfit to be listened to, as by appeal- 
 ing to geometrical progression for the proof of 
 an economical or social theory. 
 
 4th. But the consideration of greatest impor- 
 tance in computing the cost of ''producing" 
 farms is that, in general, agricultural improve- 
 ments are compensated, and are expected to be 
 compensated, in great measure, upon the prin- 
 ciple of those annuities in which a certain 
 number of annual payments both yield due in- 
 terest on the purchase money and extinguish 
 the capital itself, as when a man for $1,000 (on 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 85 
 
 which the normal interest would be $50 or $60) 
 purchases the right to receive $120 a year for 
 a certain term, with no claim on the principal 
 thereafter. 
 
 Now, is this so, or is it not ? Let us satisfy 
 our minds on this point ; for if the proposition 
 just now stated is correct, it disposes effectu- 
 ally of the argument against the economic 
 doctrine of rent derived from the fact of ex- 
 penditures in " producing " farms. 
 
 That this proposition is correct is, I think, 
 proved conclusively by the fact that there are 
 few classes of improvements known to agricul- 
 ture which a tenant for 33 years will not make 
 at his own expense, notwithstanding the cer- 
 tainty that he will cease to enjoy the benefit 
 of them at the expiry of his lease. Even a very 
 much shorter period of enjoyment, as 21 years, 
 or, as so commonly in Scotland, 19 years, may 
 give the tenant time enough to get back the 
 value of the most expensive improvements, if 
 judiciously made. 
 
 Do not the several considerations adduced, 
 and especially the last, take away all the force 
 of this labored argument against the doctrine 
 of rent ? 
 
 Indeed, I must say that it appears to me 
 
86 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 that the proper effect of the facts relating to 
 the extent of land improvements in the past, 
 instead of impairing the validity of the general 
 body of orthodox economic doctrines, is really, 
 when properly understood, to confirm them. 
 Political economists have been wont to allege 
 that two elements enter into the rental or the 
 selling price of land, — one, rent proper, being 
 compensation for the original and indestructi- 
 ble properties of the soil ; the other, interest, 
 being compensation for capital invested. Of 
 these two, the economists have been wont to 
 allege that the first, rent proper, tends to in- 
 crease with the general advance of wealth 
 and prosperity; the other, interest on landed 
 improvements, like all forms of interest, tends 
 to diminish under the same conditions. 
 
 Now, of the two elements thus entering into 
 nominal rents, one, we hiov:, is there, and we 
 have something like a measure of its amount. 
 If, of two fields equally near the market and 
 equally accessible to cultivation, one will yield 
 30 bushels of wheat per acre to the same appli- 
 cation of labor and capital which from the 
 other will produce but 20, then there is a nor- 
 mal rent of 10 bushels an acre for the more 
 fertile as compared with the less fertile field ; 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 87 
 
 and any American would consider tlie proprie- 
 tor as little better than a fool if, in leasing tlie 
 former field, he did not get something near that 
 amomit of rent for it. In the same way, if, of 
 two equally fertile fields, each producing 30 
 bushels to the acre, one is situated close by the 
 market, while the other lies at a distance so 
 great that the cost of transportation consumes 
 one third the produce, then, again, there will 
 be a normal rent of 10 bushels per acre for 
 the nearer as compared with the more distant 
 field ; and any American would have his own 
 opmion of a landlord who, in leasing such a field, 
 should not get pretty nearly that price for the 
 advantages of its location. In some degree, 
 greater or less according to the character and 
 uistitutions of the people concerned, law, or 
 custom, or personal good feeling may enter to 
 cause some portion of the normal rent of land 
 to be remitted by landlord to tenant;^ but 
 none the less truly is it a fact, constant, certain, 
 inexpugnable, that real rent, strictly economic 
 rent, does enter into the actual rent or selling 
 price of land in every community where self- 
 interest is even the general principle which 
 governs human actions. 
 
 1 See pp. 48-51. 
 
0« LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Now, as it is a fact beyond question or cavil, 
 that rents, composed of these two elements, 
 in one or another proportion, have increased 
 greatly and almost steadily in nearly all civil- 
 ized communities throughout the past seventy- 
 five years, at the least, the more the cavillers 
 at Eicardo's doctrine adduce to show the mag- 
 nitude of the amounts of labor and capital 
 which have been in the past expended upon 
 land, the more, as it strikes me, do they afford 
 corroboration of the view of the economists 
 that it is the tendency of interest to fall with 
 the general advance of wealth and prosperity. 
 
 But Mr. Carey was not satisfied with one 
 refutation of Eicardo's law. He attempted 
 and, to the satisfaction of his disciples, achieved, 
 a second demonstration of its falsity. That this 
 subsidiary argument against the doctrine of 
 rent should have been for a moment admitted ; 
 that, indeed, it was not exploded at once amid 
 general ridicule, — affords a striking proof of the 
 weakness and vagueness with which economic 
 questions, especially those affecting the land, 
 have been discussed. It is a great pity, from 
 the point of view of one who enjoys contro- 
 versy, that Mr. Eicardo had not lived long 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 89 
 
 enough to deal with this audacious assailant of 
 his law of rent. A very pretty case of dissec- 
 tion was lost through Mr. Eicardo's untimely 
 death. I give Mr. Carey's argument in his 
 own language. 
 
 " It will," he says/ " be perceived that the 
 whole system is based upon the assertion of 
 the existence of a single fact, namely, that, in the 
 commencement of cultivation, when population 
 is small and land consequently abundant, the 
 soils capable of yielding the largest return to 
 any given quantity of labor alone are cultivated. 
 
 "' That fact exists, or it does not. If it has 
 no existence, the system falls to the ground. 
 That it does not exist, that it never has existed in 
 any country whatsoever, and that it is contrary to 
 the nature of things that it should have existed, 
 or can exist, we propose noiu to show. 
 
 " We shall commence," he says, " our ex- 
 amination with the United States. Their first 
 settlement is recent ; and, the work being still 
 in progress, we can readily trace the settler and 
 mark his course of operation. If we find him 
 invariably occupying the high and thin lands 
 requiring little clearing and no drainage, those 
 which can yield but a small return to labor, 
 1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 23. 
 
90 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 and as invariably travelling down the hills and 
 clearing and draining the lower and richer 
 lands, as population and wealth increase, then 
 will the theory we have offered be confirmed 
 by practice, — American practice, at least. 
 
 "If, however, we can thence follow him 
 into Mexico and through South America, into 
 Britain, and through France, Germany, Italy, 
 Greece, and Egypt, into Asia and Australia, and 
 show that such has been his invariable course of 
 action, then may it be believed that when pop- 
 ulation is small and land consequently abun- 
 dant, the work of cultivation is, and always 
 must be, commenced upon the poorer soils; 
 that, with the growth of population and wealth, 
 other soils, yielding a larger return to labor, 
 are always brought into activity, with a con- 
 stantly increasing return to the labor expended 
 upon them." 
 
 I will not say, with Koscher, that Mr. Carey's 
 lengthy exposition is "rank with inexact sci- 
 ence and unhistorical history." It does not 
 matter a particle, so far as the validity of 
 Eicardo's doctrine is concerned, whether Mr. 
 Carey has correctly apprehended or grossly 
 misapprehended the facts of human history, 
 in the respect under consideration. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTPJNE OF EENT. 91 
 
 Let it be conceded that the order of settle- 
 ment in all new countries is that which Mr. 
 Carey has indicated, — the new-comers taking up 
 light, dry, sandy soils, which will yield a quick 
 return to the labor of the colonists, aided by 
 their scanty capitals ; and that it is only when 
 wealth has been in some measure accumulated, 
 after the first severe struggle to maintam ex- 
 istence, that deeper and richer, but cold and 
 wet soils are opened, the forests cleared, the 
 swamps, rich with the vegetable mould of cen- 
 turies, dramed. What, pray, does all this prove, 
 so far as the doctrme under consideration is 
 concerned ? It is absolutely indifferent to the 
 matter at issue. 
 
 It is true that Eicardo assumed, for the pur- 
 pose of illustrating his doctrine, that the soils 
 first cultivated, within any considerable coun- 
 try, were those most productive. It also ap- 
 pears from the context, that Mr. Eicardo really 
 supposed that this was the historical order of 
 occupation. Yet the economic law of rent has 
 reference alone to the lands under cultivation 
 at the same time ; and would have precisely as 
 much validity if everything which ]\Ir. Carey 
 has contended for, regarding the actual order 
 of settlement and cultivation, were conceded, 
 
92 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 as if the hypothesis of Eicardo had been histori- 
 cally accurate. 
 
 Thus, let us revert for a moment to the illus- 
 tration offered, in the preceding chapter, of the 
 origin of rent. We there assumed the existence 
 of four tracts of different degrees of fertility, 
 with population so increasing as to send culti- 
 vation down from the 24-bushel tract to the 
 22-bushel tract, thence down to the 20-bushel 
 tract, and so on ; showing how rent emerged 
 at the first descent of cultivation, and how 
 rents were readjusted at every rise or fall of 
 the margin, or, as I prefer to call it, the lower 
 limit, of cultivation. But the operation of the 
 principle of self-interest in dealing with the 
 land would be precisely the same, if, instead of 
 a community, small at first, growing slowly in 
 numbers and thus coming to occupy the four 
 tracts successively, we were to suppose that a 
 tribe numerous enough to require the cultivation 
 of all four tracts at once, were to move upon the 
 land. It would still be true that any member 
 of the tribe could as well afford to pay 6 bush- 
 els rent for the 24-bushel tract as occupy a lot 
 of the 18-bushel land for nothing, or cultivate 
 a portion of the 22-bushel tract at a rent of 
 4 bushels. All the incidents we have described 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 93 
 
 would occur upon one hypothesis exactly as 
 upon the other. 
 
 But you will ask : Is it really possible that 
 Mr. Carey could have made so great a blunder ? 
 Is there not some mistake about this ? Are 
 you fairly representing him ? 
 
 I answer : I have represented Mr. Carey with 
 perfect fairness ; have repeated his own words, 
 and commented upon them in the very mean- 
 ing which a hundred repetitions show that 
 Mr. Carey intended they should bear. 
 
 The fact is, while Mr. Carey claimed to have, 
 by this argument, refuted Eicardo's law of 
 rent, and while that claim has been echoed 
 from every side by his admirers, what Mr. 
 Carey is here attacking is not Eicardo's law 
 of rent, at all, but a deduction, true or false, 
 from Eicardo's law of rent taken in conjunction 
 with Malthus's law of population. 
 
 Mr. Malthus attempted to prove, positively, 
 that mankind will increase, even to their own 
 hurt. Mr. Eicardo showed, purely hypothetic 
 cally, what must happen if by increase of popu- 
 lation cultivation be driven down to inferior 
 soils. 
 
 Hereupon the economists, generally, who ac- 
 cept the doctrines both of Eicardo and of Mai- 
 
94 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 thus, have asserted that there is, in all com- 
 munities, a practically irresistible tendency to 
 an increase of population which will surely 
 drive cultivation down to lower and still lower 
 soils, with the result of a smaller and still 
 smaller per capita product, yielding a scantier 
 and still scantier subsistence to the members 
 of the community. But this is not Eicardo's 
 law of rent, which would hold true of a com- 
 munity slowly diminishing in numbers from 
 generation to generation (contrary to Malthus's 
 law of population), and, by consequence, with- 
 drawing, little by little, from the worst lands 
 under cultivation, and thus increasing the per 
 capita product. 
 
 I have said that the complete establishment 
 of Carey's historical order would not affect the 
 validity of Eicardo's law of rent; and that, 
 therefore, one might, for argument's sake, con- 
 cede the accuracy of the narrative concerning 
 the early settlement of Europe, Asia, and 
 America, which occupies so large a portion of 
 Mr. Carey's treatises, without surrendering even 
 an outwork of the Eicardian doctrine. 
 
 But while the historical order of settlement 
 is thus of no consequence as affecting the eco- 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 95 
 
 nomic law of rent, it must be admitted that 
 very important economic consequences would 
 follow the establishment of Mr. Carey's propo- 
 sition that " the work of cultivation is and 
 always must be commenced upon the poorer 
 soils ; that, with the growth of population and 
 wealth, other soils yielding a larger return to 
 labor are always brought into activity ; " or, as 
 he elsewhere expresses it, that the settler in- 
 variaUy travels down the hills, clearing and 
 draining the lower and richer lands, as popula- 
 tion and wealth increase. 
 
 l^Tow, as we are about to hold Mr. Carey 
 accountable for this sweeping proposition, let 
 there be no question that these expressions 
 fairly represent the general drift of his argu- 
 ment. Of this, no one familiar with his volumi- 
 nous writings will entertain a doubt. Mr. Carey 
 asserts not only the unreality, but the impossi- 
 bihty, of the assumed fact that the increase of 
 population sends cultivation down to inferior 
 soils, in terms no less strong than these : It does 
 not exist ; it never has existed in any country 
 whatsoever ; it is contrary to the nature of 
 things that it should have existed or can 
 exist. 
 
 What are the economic consequences which. 
 
96 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 as we have said, would follow the establish- 
 ment of Mr. Carey's proposition ? These : 
 that, instead of the increase of population 
 lowering the margin of cultivation, and thus 
 enhancing the aggregate body of rents,^ it 
 would be shown to have the effect, by stimulat- 
 ing the cultivation of better lands, to throw out 
 the poorer (the first cultivated soils), and thus 
 to raise the lower limit of cultivation, and thus 
 at once to diminish the share of the produce 
 going as rent to the landlord, and to increase 
 the average produce, per capita, of the com- 
 munity. Eents will still be determined by the 
 Ricardian formula ; but the importance of rent 
 as a factor in the distribution of wealth will be 
 diminished. 
 
 In view of the importance of these conse- 
 quences, let us proceed to examine Mr. Carey's 
 sweeping assertions regarding the actual order 
 of settlement and occupation, for the purposes 
 of agriculture. Let us see whether this history 
 be indeed historical or not. 
 
 In the first place, we note that Mr. Carey's 
 detailed accounts relate, in the main, either to 
 the settlement and cultivation of countries in 
 ages when military necessities were a con- 
 
 1 See pp. 53-55. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 97 
 
 trolling force, or else to the very earliest stages 
 of settlement and cultivation of the land, under 
 circumstances which make the needs of im- 
 mediate subsistence peculiarly urgent, as in the 
 new States of the American Union, eighty, 
 sixty, forty years ago. 
 
 It would take more time than we have at 
 command, even were the game worth the can- 
 dle, to go through the history of the settlement 
 of Britain, Italy, Greece, Germany, and other 
 ancient countries, and attempt to analyze the 
 influences which determined the selection of 
 lands for habitation and cultivation. When 
 we contrast the sites of nearly all ancient and 
 mediseval cities, built upon the towering rock, 
 with the utterly indefensible sites of our mod- 
 ern cities, we can well understand that not 
 economical but political and military exigencies 
 may have given a strong preference to high and 
 rugged ground, even for agriculture, in the days 
 of almost universal warfare. The crops, in- 
 deed, raised on such ground would neither be 
 so ample, nor obtained with so little effort and 
 sacrifice, as those which might have been raised 
 in the fertile valleys below, but they would 
 have been in a less degree subject to be swept 
 away by the forays of armed bands. 
 7 
 
98 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Fortunately, we do not need to enter into an 
 analysis involving so much time and labor, and 
 perplexed by so many uncertainties regarding 
 the facts with which we should have to deal. If 
 the forces which in those days determined pop- 
 ulation to high and poor soils were exclusively 
 or even predominantly economic forces, we 
 shall not fail to find them operating to control 
 the occupation of new countries in these piping 
 times of general peace. Let us then consider 
 the course of settlement in the United States. 
 Mr. Carey himself expresses his preference for 
 investigation in this field. " Their first settle- 
 ment," he says, "is recent, and, the work being 
 still in progress, we can readily trace the settler, 
 and mark his course of operation." ^ 
 
 And, to further narrow the field, let us con- 
 fine our view to the State of Ohio. This State 
 is as favorable as any to Mr. Carey's theory. 
 "The early settlers," he says, "of Ohio, In- 
 diana, and Illinois uniformly selected the higher 
 grounds, leaving the richer lands for their suc- 
 cessors." 2 
 
 1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 24. 
 
 2 Past, Present, and Future, p. 32. Indeed, Ohio affords 
 a much better opportunity for exhibiting the operation of 
 economic forces than either of the other States named, inas- 
 much as it is more generally wooded, has a greater diversity 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 99 
 
 Now let US take this case up and push it. 
 If Mr. Carey has justly generalized the facts of 
 the settlement of this great free State, he is 
 entitled to much praise. 
 
 The settlement of Ohio may be said to have 
 been in progress all the time between 1802, 
 when its inhabitants were fewer than 50,000, 
 and 1832, when its population had reached 
 1,000,000 ; in progress in this sense, that not 
 until the latter date had settlers found their 
 way into every corner and county of the new 
 State beyond the AUeghanies. 
 
 Now let it be conceded that throughout this 
 period Mr. Carey's statement regarding the 
 course of occupation holds good, substantially. 
 I say, substantially, because to justify the as- 
 sertion that the settlers "uniformly" selected 
 the higher grounds would require a vastly 
 greater amount of particular and local knowl- 
 edge regarding the territory of Ohio than any 
 one man ever possessed. 
 
 How much, then, would there be in this fact, 
 admitted for the sake of argument, which should 
 be in contravention of the economic doctrine of 
 
 of surface, and a larger proportion of rocky ground, than 
 either Indiana or Illinois, which are purely prairie States, of 
 great uniformity of surface and of soil. 
 
100 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 rent ? These early settlers of Ohio were, in the 
 first instance, necessarily controlled in their " lo- 
 cation " by considerations relating to the trans- 
 portation of their products and to communication 
 with the settlements they had left behind. 
 Now, advantages of situation, as we have be- 
 fore seen, enter just as fully into the net pro- 
 ductiveness of any tract of land, according to 
 Eicardo's doctrine, as advantages arising from 
 superior fertility. Even in illustrating the ori- 
 gin of rent, in our first chapter, we assumed the 
 existence of a, very productive tract, situated at 
 so great a distance that it would not be oc- 
 cupied until cultivation had been driven to 
 descend through several successive stages with- 
 in the territory immediately surrounding the 
 market. 
 
 But, secondly, the early settlers of Ohio were 
 largely compelled by the immediate exigencies 
 of pioneer life to do something different from 
 that which would have been the most economi- 
 cal had they possessed an ample store of neces- 
 saries and of the utensils and materials of 
 industry. New-comers must needs do, not what 
 they would, but what they can ; they must 
 raise a quick crop, by little labor ; and it is 
 natural enough that they should generally seek 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 101 
 
 the side-hill, which is self-drained, and the open 
 country, which does not require clearing, and 
 the thin, dry soil, which gives a speedy, though 
 not a large return. 
 
 They still seek that land which will be most 
 productive under the circumstances in which 
 they find themselves placed ; for, as Professor 
 Johnston has well said, that which would be 
 rich land for a rich man may be poor land 
 for a poor man. 
 
 But the question I wish now to raise is, 
 whether, when the first exigencies of pioneer 
 life were passed, when some store had been 
 accumulated, when population had become 
 sufficiently dense to allow a reasonable degree 
 of co-operation in labor, when time had been 
 afforded to lay out roads and bridges and to 
 perfect the means of transportation, when the 
 capabilities and resources of the land had be- 
 come thoroughly known, — whether then it 
 remained true that cultivators in Ohio neg- 
 lected the best soils for those of an inferior 
 quality ? 
 
 If not, the fabric so laboriously reared for 
 assaulting the stronghold of the economists 
 tumbles to the ground, of its own weight. 
 How much does it matter that the people of 
 
102 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 Ohio, while they were first spreading loosely 
 over the State, took up lands as Mr. Carey 
 says they did, unless it can be proved, or at 
 least a strong presumption can be established, 
 that they continued to take up poorer soils, in 
 preference to the best ? Mr. Carey asserts that 
 the hypothetical order of settlement is " uni- 
 versally false ; " that is, it is false as applied 
 not to one but to all stages of the history of 
 any community. As this matter is important, 
 let us formulate it somewhat rigidly. 
 
 Let us suppose the possibly cultivable lands 
 of Ohio to form seven distinct grades, 1 to 7, 
 'No. 1 being the poorest, No. 7 the richest. 
 Let us divide the economic life of Ohio, be- 
 ginning in 1802 and ending — when? into 
 seven generations, with continually increasing 
 population. 
 
 Now, unless Mr. Carey is grossly mistaken, 
 generation No. 1, the first settlers, will take 
 up lands No. 1, the poorest of all ; generation 
 No. 2 will take up lands No. 2, the next to the 
 poorest; generation No. 3 will take up lands 
 No. 3, and so on. 
 
 This, or something very like it, must take 
 place, or Mr. Carey's " law " breaks down ; for 
 should generation No. 3, say, have the pre- 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 103 
 
 sumption to take up lands No. 6, and genera- 
 tion No. 4 be thereby encouraged to take up 
 lands No. 1, why then generation No. 5 will 
 perforce be compelled to take up lands No. 5, 
 that is, lands poorer than those which had been 
 brought m by the two generations preceding, 
 while generation No. 6 will be driven to take 
 up lands No. 4, far down on the scale of fer- 
 tility ; and generation No. 7, the flower of civi- 
 lization, will actually have to " decline upon " 
 lands No. 3, which, according to Mr. Carey, 
 generation No. 3 should, in conscience, have 
 taken up. In other words, we should have 
 cultivation driven down to inferior soils, a 
 state of things respecting which Mr. Carey 
 declares that it not only never has existed in 
 any country whatsoever, but that it is contrary 
 to the nature of things that it should have 
 existed or can exist. 
 
 In view of such possible results, what an 
 appalling responsibility rests upon the people 
 of any generation in the matter of not taking 
 up any better land than they ought ! In the 
 first place, think what a degree of virtue it 
 requires, that they should deliberately deny 
 themselves the enjoyment of the really best 
 land around them, in order that the coming 
 
104 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 generations, with increasing numbers, slionld 
 have the privilege of first occupying these, as 
 Mr. Carey says they must do ! Even more 
 remarkable than this, think of the degree of 
 intelligence that is required to point out to 
 the men of any generation just the share of 
 the lands of the State which Mr. Carey's theory 
 will permit them to occupy, they being neces- 
 sarily ignorant as to what the future popula- 
 tion of the State is to be, or through how many 
 generations or centuries the increase of popu- 
 lation upon the territory is to be continued ! 
 
 But let us return to Ohio. We have seen 
 what is required to make Mr. Carey's " his- 
 torical law " true. How far do the probabili- 
 ties of the case favor the rigid application of 
 that law throughout the settlement of this 
 State ? 
 
 We may believe that there were, in Ohio, 
 in 1832, when the population was 1,000,000, 
 about 4,000,000 acres of improved land in 
 farms. By 1850, when the population had 
 risen to 2,000,000, these 4,000,000 acres had.be- 
 come 10,000,000. Did the addition thus made 
 to the enclosed and improved lands of the State 
 include a fair proportion of the best lands 
 within its limits, or were the new lands, also, 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF KENT. 105 
 
 tliin, dry, sandy soils, only not quite so poor as 
 those brought in between 1802 and 1832, — 
 soils giving little root to grasses or to grain, 
 but raising a small crop easily and quickly ? 
 Unless the latter was the case, Mr. Carey's 
 great historical law becomes little better than 
 arrant nonsense. 
 
 There is a popular belief throughout the 
 Eastern States of this Union, that, in the eigh- 
 teen years covered by this period, — 1832-50, — 
 there was an immense amount of "clearing" 
 done in Ohio; and the virtues of the "pio- 
 neer's axe" have been celebrated in song and 
 story. Is this all a mistake ? Or, if the peo- 
 ple of Ohio really did cut down the prime- 
 val timber over thousands of square miles, did 
 they, as they ought, take pains to cut down 
 only timber which grew over comparatively 
 poor soils, so as not to interfere with the 
 rights vested in unborn generations by Mr. 
 Carey's "law"? 
 
 Imagine Abraham Garfield, after reading Mr. 
 Carey's " Political Economy," going into the 
 woods, with his stalwart sons, axe on shoulder. 
 He stoops down, gathers a sample of the soil, 
 and after a patient examination rises with a 
 sigh, and exclaims : " No, boys, it won't do for 
 
106 LA.ND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 US to cut down this bit of timber. The land 
 underneath is too good for the like of us. The 
 population of the county will not, you know, 
 attain its maximum until 2184, and if we 
 should, now that it is only the year of grace 
 1847, open this ground for cultivation, those 
 who come after us might be obliged to resort 
 to soils which would not be of as good a 
 quality, and this Mr. Carey assures us can 
 never be. So let us move on. We will strike 
 into that lot across the ridge, where we know 
 the soil is just thin and dry and mean enough 
 for you and me." 
 
 Between 1850 and 1880, again, the popula- 
 tion of Ohio has increased to 3,000,000, and 
 the number of acres of improved lands has 
 risen to 18,000,000. Are the 8,000,000 acres 
 improved for the first time during this period, 
 all, or substantially all, of a quality next above 
 those previously brought in, but still below 
 the best ? Has this added territory embraced 
 lands only a little less thin, a little less shal- 
 low, a little less dry, than those occupied in 
 1850 ? Has this vast annexation still left the 
 really good lands of the State uncultivated, 
 only to be improved when the population shall 
 reach 5,000,000 or 10,000,000 ? 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF KENT. 107 
 
 I do not care to contest Mr. Carey's theory 
 that the first generation of settlers in any 
 American State have spread themselves loosely 
 over the soil, picking out the spots which offered 
 the greatest facilities for the transportation of 
 produce and for communication with the older 
 settlements, perhaps giving a certain preference 
 to naturally cleared, self-drained land. But 
 that the second generation, in any American 
 State, north of Mason and Dixon's line at least, 
 have shrunk from the real problem of their 
 economic life, have failed to grapple with the 
 obstacles which withstood their acquisition of 
 the richest resources of nature, have neglected 
 to subdue the soil, the best soil they could 
 find, with axe and spade, strenuously, manfully, 
 with incessant toil, with unflinchinoj courage, 
 T, for one, do not believe ; and Mr. Carey has 
 not adduced a scintilla of evidence to prove a 
 proposition so contrary to all we have ever 
 learned of the character and life of the West- 
 ern people. It would require a detailed local 
 knowledge of at least 50,000 farms, including 
 the time and manner in which every field 
 therein came to be enclosed and cultivated, to 
 establish such a proposition regarding the State 
 of Ohio alone. In the absence of any such sta- 
 
108 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 tistical demonstration, common fame and com- 
 mon sense give the flattest contradiction to this 
 monstrous hypothesis. 
 
 With this we may leave Mr. Carey's argu- 
 ment against the Eicardian doctrine of rent. 
 The person who denies the truth of the Eicar- 
 dian law in effect declares that men habitually 
 rent highly fertile and comparatively infertile 
 fields, rich corn lands and mountain pastures, 
 at the same price ; that men habitually rent 
 lands near a market at the same price with 
 lands the most distant from the market. If he 
 does not mean to assert this, he does not in the 
 smallest degree traverse the path of Eicardo's 
 majestic argument. If he does mean to assert 
 this, he puts himself on the level of the person 
 who should assert that men habitually sell 2 
 bushels or 10 bushels of wheat at one and the 
 same price. 
 
 In a word, Eicardo's doctrine can no more 
 be impugned than the sun in heaven, and those 
 who mouth at it simply show that they do not 
 know what it was Eicardo taught. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 109 
 
 LEROY-BEAULIEU. 
 
 The latest attack on the economic doctrine 
 of rent, that of M. Leroy-Beaulieu,i need not 
 detain us long. 
 
 I say, attack upon the economic doctrine 
 of rent ; and yet M. Leroy-Beaulieu does not 
 in terms attack that doctrine. Indeed, this 
 distinguished economist and statistician is not 
 capable of denying the theoretical truth of the 
 doctrine of Eicardo. He admits that the fact 
 of differences in natural advantages, whether 
 of fertility or of situation, among the fields con- 
 tributing to the supply of the market, must 
 leave a surplus above the cost of production in 
 the hands of the cultivators of all but the 
 lowest grade of soils. 
 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu's attack upon the doc- 
 trine of rent takes the form, not of questioning 
 its theoretical validity, but of disparaging its 
 present and prospective importance in the dis- 
 tribution of wealth. Did M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
 confine himself to a careful statistical measure- 
 ment of that part of the rents actually paid by 
 tenants to landlords which is due to the natural 
 advantages of the soil, whether of climate or 
 
 1 La Repartition des Pdchesses. Paris, 1882. 
 
110 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 location ; and were the effect of his investiga- 
 tion merely to reduce somewhat, or even to 
 reduce very considerably, the importance gen- 
 erally assigned to rent proper as a factor in the 
 distribution of wealth, — I should not presume 
 to speak of him as making an attack upon the 
 Eicardian doctrine. But inasmuch as M. Leroy- 
 Beaulieu, while admittmg the theoretical valid- 
 ity of that doctrine, carries his disparagement 
 of its practical importance to such an extreme as 
 to lead him to declare that rent — real economic 
 rent — has ceased to have any significance in the 
 modern distribution of wealth, having already 
 sunk to an economical minimum, and is on the 
 point of disappearing altogether, I conceive that 
 we cannot regard his discussion of the subject 
 as anything less, or anything other, than an 
 attack upon the economic doctrine of rent. 
 
 " Subjected," says this writer, " to an atten- 
 tive examination, the doctrine of Eicardo ap- 
 pears to us to have, to-day, almost no practical 
 importance." ^ Elsewhere he says that, of the 
 produce of the soil, it is only a parcelle infime ^ 
 which goes to the proprietor. The English 
 school of economists, he declares, have exagger- 
 
 1 La Repartition des Eicliesses, p. 103. 
 
 2 i^i(j^ p, 113, 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. Ill 
 
 ated singidierement the pretended privilege of 
 the rural proprietor; "to speak the 'truth, it is 
 not even an exaggeration, hut a veritable trav- 
 esty of facts." ^ 
 
 For the support of his views regarding the 
 narrowness of the influence exerted by rent 
 upon the distribution of wealth, this writer 
 relies chiefly upon the argument derived from 
 what Mr. Carey calls the cost of producing 
 farms. The French economist is not only 
 much more moderate in his assertions than the 
 American economist, whom he follows on this 
 line, but he brings to the discussion a far higher 
 degree of statistical ability, and draws upon a 
 much wider range of statistical data. He does 
 not, indeed, reach any such sweeping conclu- 
 sion as that there is no township or parish the 
 present value of whose lands would repay the 
 labor which has been expended upon them ; yet, 
 after a wide-reaching discussion of all the facts 
 at his command, he issues with this result, 
 that the enhancement of rents in England, 
 France, and Belgium during the last seventy- 
 five years — or, say, since the peace of 1815 — 
 has not amounted to a sum greatly in excess 
 of a fair interest return upon the expenditures 
 
 1 La Eepartition des Richesses, pp. 115, 116. 
 
112 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 directed towards the improvement of the soil 
 within the same period. 
 
 Now, the force of this argument has already 
 been sufficiently discussed while we were deal- 
 ing with Mr. Carey's attack on Eicardo. I 
 have sought to show that expenditures upon 
 land are, in very large part, made in the expec- 
 tation that they will be compensated by the 
 increased yield of a comparatively short term 
 of years. It might have been difficult to prove 
 this, were the cultivator of the soil always the- 
 proprietor ; but when we find by far the greater 
 part of the lands of England, and no inconsid- 
 erable part of those of France and Belgium, in 
 the hands of tenants, and when we see that 
 those tenants, holding under leases for 11, 19, 
 21, or possibly 33 years, as a maximum, freely 
 make, in their own interest, nearly every class 
 of improvements known to agriculture,^ we have 
 what seems to me a sufficient refutation of the 
 argument by which it is sought to disparage 
 the importance of rent, — real economic rent, — 
 the compensation that is paid for the natural 
 
 1 Even in cities, costly residences, stores, and warehouses 
 are often built upon leased land, to go entire to the proprie- 
 tor of the soil at the expiry of the lease, the tenant looking 
 to secure his own interest by the profits of occupation during 
 the brief interval. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 113 
 
 advantages of the soil, through magnifying the 
 vokime of expenditures made for its im^Drove- 
 ment. 
 
 But M. Leroy-Beaulieu is not content with 
 the indirect method of establishing the insig- 
 nificance of rent, — the method, that is, which 
 seeks to show that, of the two elements enter- 
 ing into the compensation for the use of land, 
 rent must be little because interest is so great. 
 He undertakes to establish the same conclusion, 
 directly and affirmatively, by showing that mod- 
 ern facilities of transportation have reduced 
 the tax or toll levied upon the aggregate pro- 
 duce of the land in favor of the proprietor class, 
 to the extent of practically extinguishing rent, 
 — rent proper. 
 
 His line of argument is this : Modern facili- 
 ties of transportation have substituted, for the 
 distinction between cultivated lands as more 
 or less fertile, the distinction between cultivated 
 lands as more or less remote from market. No 
 community is now confined, in obtainmg its 
 subsistence, to the lands surrounding it, as was 
 formerly the case in a high degree. The Eo- 
 mans and the Athenians, indeed, brought grain 
 from the Black Sea, Egypt, and Africa; but 
 they would have starved had they depended 
 8 
 
114 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 for any essential part of their supply upon 
 lands as distant as Australia or America. Any 
 Englishman may now eat the wheat of Min- 
 nesota or Dakota ; any German may, if Bis- 
 marck will let him, eat the hams of Cincinnati 
 or Chicacfo. Steam navis^ation has enabled the 
 whole world to resort to the world's best soils, 
 and eat of the produce thereof at the cost of 
 raising it plus only the cost of transport, and 
 this cost of transport is steadily diminishing 
 under the force of invention and discovery. 
 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu's discussion of this sub- 
 ject is very interesting, and, except as he deals 
 with questions of degree, is sound and just. 
 The principle he adduces is incontestable. In 
 our statement and illustration of the origin of 
 rent, we purposely placed one of the tracts 
 dealt with at a great distance, and inquired as 
 to the effects of successive reductions in the 
 cost of transportation, not only upon the culti- 
 vation of that tract itself, but upon the cultiva- 
 tion of the home tracts, and upon the rentals 
 they would severally bear. 
 
 But when M. Leroy-Beauheu declares that 
 the cost of transportation has already been 
 reduced so low that rent has become nearly if 
 not quite a genuine economic minimum, he 
 
ATTACKS UPOX THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 115 
 
 utterly transcends the limits of toleration and 
 deservedly forfeits the confidence of his reader. 
 
 Fortunately we need no elaborate or extended 
 argument to prove him hopelessly in the wrong. 
 Turn we to England. Here we find a steady 
 increase in the price of animal food throughout 
 the last thirty or forty years, notwithstanding 
 free trade and improved navigation ; that price 
 " rising," as Sir James Caird states, " in a few 
 years from fivepence to sevenpence, ninepence, 
 and even a shilling, a pound." ^ 
 
 Under any cii^cumstances. Sir James remarks, 
 the English producer has the advantage of at 
 least a penny, in the pound of live meat, 
 arising from the cost and risk of transporta- 
 tion, over his transatlantic competitor, an ad- 
 vantage equal to £4 on an average ox.^ " Of 
 this natural advantage nothing can deprive 
 him ; and with this he may rest content." 
 
 " Fresh meat from America," he continues, 
 '' from the costly methods necessary to pre- 
 serve it, will, on the produce of an acre, cost 
 
 1 The Landed Interest and tlie Price of Land, pp. 2, 3. 
 
 2 Mr. Alfred Pell states the average freight of live cattle 
 from America at £7 per head. "I have heard," he writes, 
 " that the price has since been reduced to £5. It was as 
 high as £12 in the first instance, and they have carried cat- 
 tle, I believe, as low as 50 shillings." 
 
116 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 equal to 40 sliillings, for transport to tliis 
 country." JsTow, 40 shillings an acre is equiv- 
 alent to the average rent of land in England, 
 — a rent with which, Sir James remarks, the 
 British land-owner may well rest content. In 
 regard to the cereal and other vegetable crops, 
 the same high authority testifies that the cost 
 of transporting from California, the Black Sea, 
 or India, the chief sources of supply, a quan- 
 tity of wheat equal to the produce of an acre, 
 "is seldom less, and often more than 40 shil- 
 lings. " ^ " Hay and straw," he adds, " are so bulky 
 that they can only bear the cost of carriage 
 from near Continental ports." Certainly this 
 does not look like a statistical minimum. 
 Forty shillings ($12) an acre is a very pretty 
 rent, neither to be despised by the landlord 
 nor to be neglected by the economist in dis- 
 cussing the distribution of wealth. 
 
 And if we inquire how the selling price of 
 land has been affected by modern facilities for 
 transport and intercommunication, we have 
 this remarkable statement from tlje same writer, 
 certainly the most capable agricultural observer 
 
 1 See, also, the address of Sir James Caird, as President 
 of the Statistical Society, 1881, in the Journal of the So- 
 ciety. 
 
% 
 
 ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 117 
 
 in Great Britain, where since 1851 his authority 
 has been undisputed, namely, that the capital 
 wealth of the owners of landed property has 
 been increased, in Great Britain and Ireland, by 
 £331,000,000 in 20 years, "at a cost to them 
 which probably has not exceeded £60,000,000." 
 
 Here we have, according to this eminent 
 economist, a net increase of the selling price of 
 the lands of Great Britain and Ireland, after 
 deduction of the cost of improvements, of not 
 less than £270,000,000, or $1,350,000,000. 
 
 It is true that during the five years since 
 Sir James Caird wrote these words, the in- 
 creasing severity of American competition ^ has 
 very considerably reduced the rental value of 
 the lands of the United Kingdom ; but there 
 is no reason to suppose that this effect has 
 proceeded far enough to neutralize the gain of 
 the twenty years preceding, notwithstanding 
 all those improvements in the means and agen- 
 cies of transport and intercommunication upon 
 which M. Leroy-Beaulieu dwells with so much 
 emphasis and eloquence. 
 
 I do npt know that I could give a better 
 idea, in a single line, of the strained way in 
 which M. Leroy-Beaulieu pursues his object of 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 23-26. 
 
118 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 demonstrating that economic rent has ceased 
 to be a factor in the distribution of wealth, 
 than by saying that he seriously refers to the 
 lamentable exx^eriences of Mr. Martin Chuzzle- 
 wit, of the late firm of Chuzzlewit and Tapley, 
 Architects and Land Surveyors, as an instance 
 in point to prove the native valuelessness of 
 land and the greatness of the pains and perils 
 which attend its occupation and cultivation ! 
 Many a hundred thousand of American agri- 
 culturists, who, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, 
 " went West," taking up government land un- 
 der the Homestead Act, who, every year since, 
 have lived with their families on the land, con- 
 suming at least twice as much of animal and 
 vegetable food as falls to the lot of the English, 
 French, or German peasant, and whose lands 
 are now worth, through the mere growth of 
 the country, $10, $30, or $50 an acre, could 
 reassure the philanthropic heart of M. Leroy- 
 Beaulieu. 
 
 In like manner, this really admirable econo- 
 mist and statistician, turning his eyes upon 
 Europe, disparages the natural advantages of 
 the proprietor of the soil in that region by 
 reference to the pests and plagues which beset 
 the vuie, the growing wheat, the fruiting tree. 
 
ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 119 
 
 After dwelling with profound commiseration 
 upon the ravages of the infamous phylloxera, 
 the malignant rotrytis mfestans, and the al- 
 together pernicious doriphera, he exclaims, with 
 what some might mistake for bathos : " Were 
 Eicardo to return to earth, would he, in the 
 presence of these evils which afflict the agricul- 
 ture of the elder communities, still hisist that 
 the proprietor of land is a privileged being, the 
 favorite of civilization, who sees his own profits 
 continually increase without his efforts, and 
 who gathers the larger share of the fruits of 
 social progress." ^ 
 
 If I might venture to reply for Mr. Eicardo, 
 in his absence, I would say : Were that very 
 clear-sighted and hard-headed person to revisit 
 the glimpses of the moon, and take a survey of 
 modern industrial society, it is probable that, 
 in view of the fact that fair wheat lands are 
 worth $300 in England, $50 in Illinois, and 
 $5 in Dakota, he would still be disposed to 
 hold that the possession of land near the cen- 
 tres of civilization and the marts of trade, if not 
 v/holly without drawbacks, is, on the whole, 
 phylloxera, doriphera, and rotrytis infestans 
 to the contrary notwithstanding, a decidedly 
 
 1 La Eepartition des Eicliesses, p. 102. 
 
120 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 good thing. With M. Leroy-Beaulieu's vatici- 
 nations respecting the advances to be hereafter 
 made in the arts and agencies of transportation, 
 we are not called to concern ourselves. All 
 this may come to pass, and, with Keeley Motor 
 stock at par, rents may sink to zero. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 121 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RECENT ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 
 
 As stated in the opening chapter, I shall not, 
 in this connection, take note of works which 
 attack property in general, but shall confine 
 myself to those writers who admit property 
 in the products of labor, of which they deem 
 the individual appropriation of land to be an 
 invasion. 
 
 MILL. 
 
 The later essays and speeches of Mr. Stuart 
 Mill, dealing with the land, are well known to 
 students of economics. 
 
 In 1870 Mr. Mill became President of the 
 Land Tenure Reform Association. 
 
 As its title indicates, and as its published 
 programme announced, the purpose of the As- 
 sociation was to secure a reform, and not the 
 abolition, of landed property ; but inasmuch 
 
122 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 as tlie reform which the Association deemed 
 imperative cut off so much of the incidents 
 of ownership as fairly to raise the question 
 whether enough would be left to make owner- 
 ship itself thereafter desirable, and, indeed, 
 whether the result would not be to bring the 
 greater part of the land into the hands of the 
 State as owner, through the relinquishment of 
 the land by its former owners, upon the terms 
 contained in the programme of the Associa- 
 tion, this movement is fairly to be ranked 
 among the Attacks upon Landed Property 
 made in our day. 
 
 Although, as a measure of so-called reform, 
 Mr. Mill took up this question so late in life^ 
 all the principles, whether of economics or of 
 political equity, to which he appealed at this 
 period, are distinctly laid down in his work 
 of 1848. 
 
 " The essential principle of property being 
 to assure to all persons what they have pro- 
 duced by their labor and accumulated by their 
 abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what 
 is not the produce of labor, the raw material 
 of the earth. If the land derived its produc- 
 tive power wholly from nature and not at all 
 from industry, or if there were any means of 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPEETY. 123 
 
 discriminating what is derived from each source, 
 it not only would not be necessary, but it 
 would be the height of injustice, to let the gift 
 of nature be engrossed by a few. . . . 
 
 "But, though land is not the produce of 
 industry, most of its valuable qualities are so. 
 Labor is not only requisite for using, but 
 almost equally so for fashioning, the instru- 
 ment. In many cases, even when cleared, its 
 productiveness is wholly the effect of labor 
 and art. . . . 
 
 " These are the reasons which form the justi- 
 fication, in an economical point of view, of 
 property in land. It is seen that they are 
 only valid in so far as the proprietor of land is 
 its improver. . . . 
 
 " When the sacredness of property is talked 
 of, it should always be remembered that this 
 sacredness does not belong in the same degree 
 to landed property. No* man made the land. 
 It is the original inheritance of the whole 
 species. Public reasons exist for its being ap- 
 propriated. But if those reasons lost their 
 force, the thing would be unjust. . . . 
 
 " Landed property is felt, even by those most 
 tenacious of its rights, to be a different thing 
 from other property ; and where the bulk of the 
 
124 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 community have been disinlierited of tlieir share 
 of it, and it has become the exclusive attribute 
 of a small minority, men have generally tried 
 to reconcile it, at least in theory, to their sense 
 of justice, by endeavoring to attach duties to 
 it, and erecting it into a sort of magistracy, 
 either moral or legal. But if the State is at 
 liberty to treat the possessors of land as public 
 functionaries, it is only going one step further 
 to say that it is at liberty to discard them. 
 The claim of the land-owners to the land is 
 altogether subordinate to the general policy of 
 the State. The principle of property gives 
 them no right to the land, but only a right to 
 compensation for whatever portion of their in- 
 terest in land it may be the policy of the State 
 to deprive them of. To that their claim is in- 
 defeasible!' 
 
 In 1870, as stated, Mr. Mill had so far ad- 
 vanced in his views regarding the private own- 
 ership of land, that he became President of 
 the Land Tenure Eeform Association, one " of 
 whose proposed objects was : " To claim for 
 the benefit of the State the Interception by 
 Taxation of the Future Unearned Increase of 
 the Eent of Land (so far as the same can be 
 ascertained), or a great part of that increase, 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPERTY. 125 
 
 which is continually taking place, without any 
 effort or outlay by the proprietors, merely 
 through the growth of population and wealth ; 
 reserving to owners the option of relinquish- 
 ing their property to the State at the market 
 value which it may have acquired at the time 
 when this principle may be adopted by the 
 Legislature." 
 
 This project was advocated by Mr. Mill in 
 arguments of which the following paragraphs 
 contain the essence : — 
 
 " There are some things, which, if allowed to 
 be articles of commerce at all, cannot be pre- 
 vented from being monopolized articles. On 
 all such the State has an acknowledged right to 
 limit the profits. . . . Now, land is one of these 
 natural monopolies. The demand for it in 
 every prosperous country is constantly rising, 
 while the land itself is susceptible of but little 
 increase. All such articles, when indispensa- 
 ble to human existence, tend irresistibly to rise 
 in price, with the progress of wealth and popu- 
 lation. The rise of the value of land and of 
 the incomes of land-owners during the present 
 century has been enormous. Part of it, un- 
 doubtedly, has been due to agricultural improve- 
 ments and the expenditure of capital on the 
 
126 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 soil. Mucli of it, however, is merely tlie result 
 of the increased demand for agricultural pro- 
 ducts and for building land, and would have 
 taken place even though no money had been 
 laid out in increasing the productive powers of 
 the soil. Such outlay, moreover, as there has 
 been, was made, in a great proportion of cases, 
 not by the landlord, but by the tenant,^ who 
 may or may not have been indemnified by a 
 temporary enjoyment of the profits ; but, sooner 
 or later, the increased return produced by the 
 tenant's capital, has become an unearned addi- 
 tion to the income of the landlord. 
 
 " The Society are of opinion that, in allowing 
 the land to become private property, the State 
 ought to have reserved to itself this accession 
 of income; and that lapse of time does not 
 extinguish this right, whatever claim to com- 
 pensation it may establish in favor of the land- 
 owners. . . . 
 
 " The Society do not propose to disturb the 
 land-owners in their past acquisitions ; but 
 they assert the right of the State to all such 
 accessions in the future. 
 
 "Whatever value the land may have ac- 
 quired at the time when the principle they 
 1 See ante, pp. 84, 85. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 127 
 
 contend for sliall obtain the assent of Parlia- 
 ment, tliey do not propose to interfere with. 
 If, rather than submit to be specially taxed on 
 the future increase of his rent, the land-owner 
 prefer to relinquish his land to the State, the 
 Society are willing that the State should pay 
 for it at its selling value. 
 
 "In this manner, that increase of wealth 
 which now flows into the coffers of private 
 persons from the mere progress of society, and 
 not from their own merits or sacrifices, will 
 be gradually, and in an increasing proportion, 
 diverted from them to the nation as a whole, 
 from whose collective exertions and sacrifices 
 it really proceeds." For the carrying out of 
 this scheme, Mr. Mill says: "A valuation of 
 all the land in the country would be made 
 in the first instance, and a registration estab- 
 lished of subsequent improvements made by 
 the landlord." 
 
 Looking at this statement of principles in 
 the light of our previous discussions, what do 
 we find here asserted ? 
 
 1st. There is the fullest recognition of Ei- 
 cardo's law of rent. It is asserted, in direct 
 contradiction of Messrs. Carey and Bastiat, that 
 the rental or sellmg price of land, in general, 
 
128 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 consists of two elements, — one being the own- 
 er's compensation for tlie capital invested in 
 improvements, whether above or below the sur- 
 face; the other being a remuneration exacted 
 for the use of a natural agent of production, 
 the inherent properties of the soil. 
 
 2d. It is asserted that the actual amount of 
 wealth, if not the share of the aggregate pro- 
 duct of land, labor, and capital, thus going, 
 as economic rent, to the landlord, is not only 
 of enormous importance in the existing state 
 of society, but tends strongly to increase with 
 increase of wealth and population. 
 
 This view of the present and prospective 
 consequence of rent, in the distribution of 
 wealth, which differs toto cmlo from that of 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu, leads Mr. Mill to inquire 
 into the nature of the claim of the land-owner, 
 with the result which we have read. 
 
 That individual ownership of land is of com- 
 paratively recent institution, the soil having 
 formerly been deemed the common possession 
 of cultivating communities, held together by a 
 real or constructive tie of kinship ; that, even 
 when the private ownership of land was insti- 
 tuted, rights of property were coupled with 
 political and military duties and fiscal obliga- 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. . 129 
 
 tions, which constituted no inconsiderable com- 
 pensation to the comumnity for the loss of its 
 interest in the land ; and, finally, that these 
 political and mihtary duties and fiscal obliga- 
 tions have been thrown off by the land-owning 
 class, through the exertion of their superior 
 power and influence in the formation of public 
 policies and in the enactment of laws, with- 
 out any adequate commutation thereof, — these 
 things appear to me too well established to 
 admit of question. From the point of view of 
 political equity, I know of no answer which 
 can successfully be made to Mr. Mill's argu- 
 ment. In my judgment it stands, on that side, 
 inexpugnable. 
 
 It is from the point of view, however, of 
 political expediency — using that term in its 
 largest sense, to include consideration of the 
 economic effects of the proposed change — that 
 the programme of the Land Tenure Keform 
 Association must be approved or condemned. 
 Mr. Mill himself, in his work of 1848, pro- 
 fessed, as in the paragraphs which have been 
 quoted, amenability to this rule ; nor do I un- 
 derstand him as seeking, in his later publica- 
 tions on the land question, to escape therefrom. 
 On the contrary, while the primal motive of 
 9 
 
130 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 the proposed reform is to secure a more equi- 
 table apportionment of the products of land, 
 capital, and labor, he argues not only that the 
 change will, in the first instance, bring no 
 shock to production, but that, instead of dimin- 
 ishing in any direction the impulse towards the 
 creation of values, it will, in its ultimate re- 
 sult, secure a more harmonious distribution, a 
 wiser consumption, and by consequence, in the 
 next economic generation, an increased produc- 
 tion of wealth. 
 
 What, then, should be said of Mr. Mill's 
 proposition, as a scheme of practical reform ? 
 
 In the first place, we note that, in saving the 
 rights of existing property-holders, Mr. Mill, 
 in common honesty, relinquishes the claim of 
 the community upon all that increase in the 
 rental or selling price of land which shall have 
 accompanied the increase of population and the 
 development of industry, up to the time when 
 the scheme shall be definitely adopted by legal 
 authority. Of all the probable mischief attrib- 
 utable to what Mr. Mill regards as an ill-advised 
 surrender of land to individuals, a large part 
 possibly, not improbably the larger part, has 
 already been irreparably done. It is, then. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 131 
 
 only to future increase in the value of land 
 that this scheme would apply. Such a limita- 
 tion of its scope would not only greatly reduce 
 the benefits to be derived by the State, benefits 
 for the sake of which great perils are to be 
 risked, but would wholly deprive the scheme 
 of all significance whatever, for good at least, 
 in many communities where rent has already 
 reached its maximum and tends rather to de- 
 cline than to increase, under the severity of 
 competition from newer or more fortunate 
 lands. 
 
 But, secondly, governments could not under 
 this scheme realize by any means the whole 
 even of the future mcrease of rents. This is 
 admitted by Mr. Mill, in his defence of the 
 programme of the Land Tenure Eeform Associa- 
 tion. " A large margin," he says, " should be 
 allowed for possible miscalculation." Yet such 
 an allowance would by just so much dimmish 
 the inducement for the State to assert its rights 
 to the lands now held by individuals. And 
 that this margin must, as Mr. Mill says, be 
 large, that it must be very large indeed, 
 I think we shall see, if we take into consid- 
 eration the difficulties which attend the valua- 
 tion of improvements effected in the soil. I 
 
132 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 endeavored in the last chapter to convey an 
 impression of the difficulties attending this val- 
 uation. ^ Here we have Mr. Carey declaring 
 that there is not a county, a township, a town, 
 or a city in the United States of his day, 
 which was worth what it had cost to produce 
 it. Here we have a statistician of eminence, 
 like M. Leroy-Beaulieu, prepared to prove 
 that the present rental of land in England, 
 France, or Belgium constitutes no more than 
 a fair interest on the investment made by the 
 owners. 
 
 I trust I showed to the reader's satisfaction 
 that a mistaken principle underlies all compu- 
 tations of " the cost of producing farms ; " and 
 that many, if not most, agricultural improve- 
 ments are made in the expectation of an in- 
 crease of the produce, the enjoyment of which 
 for a term of years, greater or less, answers both 
 for interest on the investment and for the 
 principal of the investment itself ; but how 
 improvements should be classified for this pur- 
 pose, what should be the term of years for any 
 one class of investments, how the first cost 
 should be computed, how the State should 
 check and prove the owner's accounts of work 
 
 1 See ante,, pp. 80-82. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 133 
 
 done, how secure that the work charged should 
 be real, effective work, such as would be given 
 to the plantmg and harvestmg of the annual 
 crop, of which the State would take no account, 
 — it must appear, on the first suggestion, that 
 these questions would involve infinite perplex- 
 ity,^ with one of two results certain to ensue : 
 either, with just and fair-minded assessors, the 
 State would, in the readjustment of values for 
 the purposes of Mr. Mill's scheme, lose every 
 time and at every point, since the assessors 
 could not know the facts upon which to base 
 a confident decision, while the owner would be 
 in a position to represent the circumstances 
 in such a way as always to leave a balance in 
 his own favor ; or else, with assessors not anx- 
 iously desirous to do right, perhaps even dis- 
 posed to assert the interests of the State to 
 extremity, owners would, in great numbers, 
 avail themselves of their right to rehnquish 
 their lands to the State, at its first registered 
 valuation, with consequences which we shall 
 consider hereafter. 
 
 3d. But we have not yet enumerated all 
 
 1 On the difficulty of distinguishing and classifying agri- 
 cultural improvements, see Mr. Newmarch's paper, in the 
 Journal of the Statistical Society, for 1871, p. 488. 
 
134 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 the difficulties which would attend the exe- 
 cution of this system of "Nationalizing the 
 Land." 
 
 Were every change of value in land, through- 
 out the most extensive community, certain to 
 be in the direction of a rise, some estates 
 rising perhaps rapidly, others slowly, and oth- 
 ers not at all, but none losing any part of their 
 present value with the lapse of time, all the 
 perplexities we have indicated would be en- 
 countered by the State in asserting for itself 
 the benefits of the "unearned increment of 
 land." 
 
 But a further and a still greater difficulty 
 would stand in the way of this scheme, namely, 
 the fact of declining values in landed property. 
 
 That the amount going to the owner of the 
 soil in rent has, taking all progressive countries 
 together, risen greatly through the past gener- 
 ation, the past century, the past three centu- 
 ries, or five, seems too clear to require proof. 
 That it is still rising, I believe, in spite of 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu's attempted disproof. That 
 it is likely, most likely, to rise through a con- 
 siderable future, though no one can conjecture 
 how fast or how far, I entertain no doubt. But 
 this general rise of rents has always been in 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 135 
 
 tlie past, and is morally certain to be in tlie 
 future, accompanied by the phenomenon of 
 values falling over considerable areas. This 
 is seen on every hand, even throughout flour- 
 ishing communities. 
 
 Now it is evident, beyond challenge or ques- 
 tion by any honest man, that in a readjustment 
 of the relations of land, made primarily to meet 
 the demands of political equity, the State, if it 
 will claim the benefit of all gain resulting from 
 general causes affecting the numbers and pro- 
 ductive power of the community, and thus due 
 neither to the merits nor to the sacrifices of own- 
 ers, is bound to make good all losses resulting 
 from a decline of demand due to causes which 
 are of a general nature, and are thus attributable 
 to no fault or neglect on the part of owners. 
 If he who remains, in name, the proprietor of 
 land is not to be allowed to reap any gain 
 not brought about by his own exertions, he has 
 a good claim to be saved harmless from loss 
 which no effort of his could have averted. 
 Heads, I win ; tails, you lose, is no fair game ; 
 it is not a game at which the State can in 
 safety or decency play with its own citizens. 
 
 4th. And now we have to note still another 
 source of loss to the State in its effort to re- 
 
136 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 sume the virtual owersliip of land, namely, 
 that, in appraising the losses to owners occur- 
 ring in the case of depreciating property, the 
 State would be bound to allow " a large mar- 
 gin for miscalculation," corresponding to that 
 adopted in the valuation of property rising in 
 value. This would constitute another deduc- 
 tion from the theoretical advantages of this 
 project. 
 
 Whether, after the State had indemnified all 
 owners of depreciating property, after it had 
 conceded all the deductions which might be 
 necessary to prevent large bodies of land from 
 coming upon its hands, at the official valuation, 
 there would be enough left, as a source of rev- 
 enue, to make it worth while to undertake a 
 measure so revolutionary and perilous in its 
 nature, may well be doubted. 
 
 That, in the event the public interest in the 
 matter of landed property were to be asserted 
 in such a way as to bring large numbers of 
 estates into the hands of public officials, the 
 treasury paying the owners therefor the original 
 registered valuation, the State could so manage 
 such properties, either by occupation, by rental, 
 or by sale, as to get its money back, even with- 
 out interest, even after much delay and great 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PIIOPERTY. 137 
 
 fiscal embarrassment, what man, who knows 
 anything of the history of State property, 
 beheves ? 
 
 Professor Emile de Laveleye has indeed, in 
 this connection, referred to the experience of 
 the early Village Communities of Europe as 
 proof that successful cultivation without 
 abuse of the soil is possible under collective 
 ownership. But consider the vast differences 
 in the conditions ! The agriculture of those 
 days was wonderfully simple and rude. The 
 communities were small, highly localized, thor- 
 oughly integrated bodies. Each man cultivated 
 his temporary allotment under the eyes of his 
 real or constructive kinsmen, subject to their 
 daily and hourly criticism and control. Any- 
 thing like abuse of the soil or neglect of the 
 punctilious prescriptions relating to the enjoy- 
 ment of the common property was a direct inva- 
 sion of the rights of every other member of the 
 community, who was in a position to know it 
 and to resent it. Could the five hundred thou- 
 sand residents of Manchester, the five million 
 residents of London, exert any corresponding 
 control of their individual interests in the farms 
 of Kent, Hampshire, Lincoln, and the Lothians ? 
 When, as by Mr. Mill's scheme, you make the 
 
138 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 unit of possession, not a village or a parish, 
 but a nation ; when the actual cultivators be- 
 come but a fraction of the community, the 
 remaining members knowing little and caring 
 less about the cultivation of the soil; when, 
 instead of a population spread evenly over the 
 land, you gather half the subjects of the 
 realm into cities and towns ; when, moreover, 
 the crops cultivated become numerous, and the 
 methods of cultivation infinitely various and 
 complicated, — then the conditions which made 
 the occupation of the soil in common even tol- 
 erable disappear. Indeed, Sir Henry Maine 
 has shown reason for believing that, even with 
 the simple agriculture of those early days, even 
 under the very limited demands then made 
 upon the soil, the organization of society into 
 village communities was ineffective for produc- 
 tive purposes ; and that it was from its lack of 
 adaptation to the wants of an increasing popu- 
 lation, that it was replaced by autocratically 
 governed manorial groups of cultivators. 
 
 The objection to common ownership of land, 
 which arises from the liability to abuse and 
 waste, disappears, of course, when building-lands 
 and town sites are brought under considera- 
 tion ; and so greatly is the problem simplified 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 139 
 
 that Dr. Adolpli Wagner, the illustrious Profes- 
 sor of Political Economy in the University of 
 Berlin, has proposed that the municipalities 
 should purchase all town property ,i in order 
 to realize therefrom the progressive increase of 
 values. 
 
 I shall, however, assume that the disadvan- 
 tages of the State or of a municipality turning 
 itself into a great real-estate company will be 
 sufficiently obvious not to require any extended 
 discussion. Think what the civil service of a 
 city like Boston, a State like Massachusetts, a 
 nation like the United States, would become, 
 if, instead of an annual pay-roll of a half mil- 
 lion, or two millions, or thirty milhons, the 
 control and manipulation of income to the 
 amount of tens or hundreds of millions, of 
 wealth to the amount of hundreds or thousands 
 of millions, were to become the object of politi- 
 cal intrigue, the spoil of political victory ! 
 
 1 It is perhaps worth noting, that Professor Wagner's 
 scheme, if practicable, would fail to satisfy all the equities of 
 the case, since the growth of towns and cities is largely due 
 to the "exertions and sacrifices" of the rural communities 
 by which they are surrounded, and which would have a 
 strong claim to be admitted to a participation in the "un- 
 earned increment of land" situated in the towns and cities 
 to which they thus contribute. 
 
140 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 The beginning of our national career found us 
 in possession of a vast public domain, on which 
 our earlier financiers looked as an important 
 fiscal resource. A wiser policy, however, pre- 
 vailed ; and although that original domain has 
 been multiplied fourfold as the result of war 
 or purchase, it has been almost as rapidly re- 
 duced by alienations, all wise and patriotic 
 statesmen agreeing, with almost perfect una- 
 nimity, that no fiscal advantage that might 
 accrue from holding the public lands as a 
 source of revenue could be weighed against 
 the interests to be secured by those lands 
 becommg the individual property of actual 
 cultivators. 
 
 That a nation which deliberately adopted the 
 policy of selling at a minimum price, and even 
 of giving away to actual settlers, the lands 
 which were already unqualifiedly public prop- 
 erty, and which has never hesitated for a mo- 
 ment in the pursuit of this policy, men of all 
 classes and all parties agreeing thereto with sub- 
 stantial unanimity, should undertake a scheme 
 that at least borders upon confiscation, for the 
 purpose of bringing under the control of the 
 treasury lands which had become a private 
 possession before the nation had an existence, 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 141 
 
 is SO -unlikely that we need not waste time in 
 arraying arguments against tlie proposition. 
 
 GEORGE. 
 
 We come now to the work of Mr. Henry 
 George, entitled "Progress and Poverty," to 
 which allusion was made in our opening 
 chapter. 
 
 Mr. George's attack upon Landed Property is 
 twofold, — from the side of natural rights, and 
 from the side of the economic interests of 
 society. 
 
 Let those who feel competent to the task 
 answer Mr. George's eloquent plea in behalf of 
 the natural and inalienable right of all indi- 
 vidual members of the human race indiscrimi- 
 nately to enter and enjoy at will each and 
 every lot and parcel of land upon the globe, 
 and every building which may have been or 
 may hereafter be erected thereupon. ^ I profess 
 no qualifications for the work, never having 
 lived in a state of nature myself, but having 
 
 1 " There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a 
 grant of exclusive ownership in land. . . . Let the parch- 
 ments be ever so many, or possession ever so long, natural jus- 
 tice can recognize no right in one man to the possession and 
 enjoyment of land, that is not equally the right of all his 
 fellows." — Progress and Poverty. 
 
142 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 resided all my life in communities more or less 
 civilized. In my humble judgment, only con- 
 siderations of political expediency or of politi- 
 cal equity are pertinent to discussions relating 
 to the arrangements of human society. I shall 
 therefore, venture to apply to Mr. George's 
 assertions and proposals regarding the occupa- 
 tion of the land purely economic tests, just 
 as if all this fine talk about the rights of man ^ 
 had been left out of his book. And this sub- 
 jection of the question of the ownership of 
 land to economic principles is, after all, not 
 something to which Mr. George can consistently 
 make objection : for he claims to write as an 
 economist; he professes to be able to give a 
 strictly economic reason for the faith that is in 
 him ; he founds his system upon the economic 
 doctrine of rent, as he understands it ; and he is 
 severe upon writers who have preceded him, on 
 
 1 " Though his titles have been acquiesced in by genera- 
 tion after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of 
 "Westminster the poorest child that is born in London to- 
 day has just as much right as has his eldest son. Though 
 the sovereign people of the State of New York consent to 
 the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that 
 comes wailing into the world, in the squalidest room of the 
 most miserable tenement house, becomes at that moment 
 seized of an equal right with the millionnaires. " — Progress 
 and Poverty. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 143 
 
 account of their slips and lapses in the appli- 
 cation of economic principles. First and fore- 
 most, Mr. George is, if he knows himself, an 
 economist. 
 
 Let us, then, proceed to consider " Progress 
 and Poverty," on this side. 
 
 In the first place, it will not be needful ^ to 
 enter into the arguments by which Mr. George 
 seeks to establish the proposition that " wages 
 are produced by the labor for which they are 
 paid." Were this proposition false, we could 
 
 1 Neither needful nor desirable. Nearly all of Mr. George's 
 assailants have wasted their strength and breath in attacking 
 the proposition expressed in the text, or in discussing the 
 arguments Mr. George puts forward in refutation of the Mal- 
 thusian doctrine of population. Witness the labored arti- 
 cles in the January number of the Edinburgh and of the 
 Quarterly Eeview. The fact is, neither Mr. George's view 
 regarding the origin of wages nor his anti-Malthusianism is, 
 in the slightest degree, of the essence of his doctrine. By 
 placing these in his front, and procuring his enemies to 
 assault them, Mr. George has evaded a direct attack upon 
 his vital point, namely, his position regarding the impor- 
 tance of rent as a factor in the distribution of wealth. To 
 reach this it is not necessary to cross the quagmire into 
 which Mr. George has drawn his heedless assailants, who 
 have been completely " blown " before they reached the posi- 
 tion upon which alone his system stands. Any one who will 
 avoid this error may raid Mr. George's camp to his heart's 
 content. 
 
144 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 concede him all the benefit to be derived from 
 its use, and still disprove the main positions of 
 his book ; but the proposition that " wages are 
 produced by the labor for which they are paid," 
 contains much truth, although the author's 
 attempts to disparage the importance of the 
 contributions to current production made by 
 capital accumulated in the past involve a fear- 
 ful straining of economic facts and economic 
 conditions.^ So far, however, as this proposi- 
 tion contains any truth, it is not, in the least 
 degree, original with Mr. George. Professor 
 Stanley Jevons in 1871 announced the doctrine 
 that ''the wages of a working man are ulti- 
 mately coincident with what he produces, after 
 the deduction of rent, taxes, and the interest of 
 
 1 As, for example, when in treating the function of cap- 
 ital in production, he says, "Accumulated wealth seems to 
 play just about such a part in relation to the social organ- 
 ism as accumulated nutriment does to the physical organism," 
 and adds, in illustration, "Some accumulated wealth is nec- 
 essary, and to a certain extent it may be drawn upon in 
 exigencies ; but the wealth produced by past generations 
 can no more account for the consumption of the present, 
 than the dinners he ate last year can supply a man with 
 present strength.'' This work abounds in statements of 
 an equal degree of extravagance, and doubtless herein 
 lies the secret of the attraction it exerts upon ill- balanced 
 minds. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 145 
 
 capital," while in my own work of 1876 it 
 was said that " wages are, in any philosophical 
 view of the subject, paid out of the product of 
 present industry, and hence production fur- 
 nishes the true measure of wages." ^ 
 
 Nor is it necessary to take time, as many of 
 Mr. George's critics have done, for a discussion 
 of Mr. George's attempted refutation of Mal- 
 thus's doctrine of population. Here, again, we 
 might concede to this writer all he claims, true 
 or false, without giving him ground on which 
 to establish the subsequent truly monstrous 
 propositions of his book. There is absolutely 
 nothing original in Mr. George's attack on Mal- 
 thusianism, — the doctrine, namely, that popula- 
 tion strongly tends to increase to its own hurt ; 
 and we should use time that might be more prof- 
 itably employed, were we to recite the thread- 
 bare arguments of the opponents of that doctrine 
 for no other reason than that Mr. George has 
 chosen to make them a preface to his doctrine 
 of rent. 
 
 What is original in Mr. George's work is the 
 enormous importance assigned^ to rent as an 
 
 1 The same doctrine was contained in an article by the 
 present writer in the North American Review of January, 
 1875, and in an Address at Amherst College in 1874. 
 10 
 
146 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 element in the distribution of wealth. Here 
 Mr. George's admirers may rightfully claim for 
 him all the credit of first discovery. No other 
 writer, so far as I am aware, ever attributed to 
 rent anything approaching ' the same degree of 
 importance. 
 
 We have seen Mr. Mill, weighed down by a 
 sense of the injustice of allowing the large an- 
 nual increment of the land to pass, unearned, 
 to the landlord, propose that the State should 
 assert the right of the community, as a whole, 
 to this body of wealth; but Mr. Mill never 
 dreamed of advancing the theory that rent nec- 
 essarily, in the progress of society, absorbs the 
 entire gain in productive power, and even more 
 than that gain, leaving the laboring classes ac- 
 tually worse off by reason of every succes- 
 sive improvement in the arts or in the social 
 order.i 
 
 1 Mr. Mill does, indeed, assert that the working classes 
 have failed to reap the greater part of the gain which should 
 have accrued to them from the improvements and inventions 
 of the past century ; but he attributes this mainly to their 
 own improvidence, ignorance, or heedlessness, or to the un- 
 due increase of population, or to social and legal wrongs, 
 outside the tenure of land. Mr. George asserts that the 
 private ownership of land deprives the laboring class of all 
 share whatsoever in the fruits of social progress, altogether 
 irrespective of increase of numbers, or of any failure to meet 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 147 
 
 On the other hand, we have heard M. Leroy- 
 Beaulieu, an economist and statistician of emi- 
 nence, declare that rent — real, economic rent, 
 as distinguished from the returns made to cap- 
 ital invested in the soil — has actually ceased 
 to be a factor in the distribution of wealth, has 
 already sunk to an economic minimum, and 
 will soon disappear altogether. 
 
 If I may resort to a somewhat unpleasant 
 physiological illustration, M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
 declares that rent is no more than the merest 
 mole upon the industrial body; Mr. Mill re- 
 gards it as an open sore, a real, appreciable, 
 and considerable drain upon the vitality of the 
 state, which should be checked by stringent 
 surgery and cautery. Mr. George looks upon 
 rent as a cancerous evil, which, growing by 
 what it feeds upon, draws into itself all the 
 vital forces of the community, extending its 
 deadly influence further and further every day, 
 every day drawing nearer and nearer to the 
 seat of life, with only one possible result, and 
 that in no distant future. 
 
 Eeduce rent, as an element in the distribu- 
 
 the requirements of a true competition. He declares that 
 this inheres, naturally, necessarily, and inevitably, in the 
 economic conditions of the private ownership of the soil. 
 
148 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 tion of wealth, to the importance assigned it by 
 M. Leroy-Beaulieu, and Mr. George's practical 
 proposals would become simply ridiculous ; and 
 probably Mr. George himself would see them 
 to be so. 
 
 Eeduce rent, as an element in the distribu- 
 tion of wealth, to the importance assigned it by 
 Mr. Mill, and Mr. George's work would be 
 emptied of all novel significance. It would 
 remain merely a passionate tract in advocacy of 
 the proposals for nationalizing the land which 
 were put forth by Mr. Mill and the Land 
 Eeform Tenure Association in 1870. 
 
 Here, then, right here, in the highly magni- 
 fied importance assigned to rent as a factor in 
 the distribution of wealth, we find all there is 
 of Mr. George's work which has either original- 
 ity or novelty. This is literally all the new 
 matter there is in the book, in the view of any 
 economic investigator. But this is Mr. George's 
 own, in every sense of the term. If Mr. George 
 is right here, he has discovered a principle of su- 
 preme importance, the neglect of which should 
 put every professional economist to the blush. 
 
 Let us, then, confine ourselves to this view 
 of the subject. 
 
 In stating and discussing the views of Mr. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 149 
 
 George, I shall seek to exercise the utmost fair- 
 ness. I shall, as far as possible, give him the 
 benefit of his own forms of expression, even at 
 the expense of much space. I shall sometimes 
 quote two, three, or even more statements of 
 the same principle, in order that it may appear 
 that I am not taking a controversial advantage 
 of any inadvertence or extravagance in expres- 
 sion. This is the more desirable, since some of 
 Mr. George's assertions are so astonishing that 
 a few repetitions really assist one in rising to 
 the height of the occasion. I shall, however, 
 take the liberty to introduce italics into my 
 quotations from Mr. George, at my own dis- 
 cretion. 
 
 In the first place, I remark, negatively, that 
 Mr. George does not attack property in general. 
 He does not rail at capital, or impeach its claim 
 to recompense. On the contrary, he vigorously 
 asserts the "natural right" of the producer to the 
 fruits of his exertions and sacrifices, whether 
 he be laborer or capitalist ; and it is partly 
 because, as he esteems it, private property in 
 land constitutes an invasion of property in the 
 product of labor, that he would bring about 
 the state ownership, or common ownership, of 
 land. 
 
150 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 In the second place, and also negatively, Mr. 
 George is not an opponent of the Eicardian 
 doctrine. The law of rent is, he says, "cor- 
 rectly apprehended by the current political 
 economy." 
 
 Indeed, so far is he from being an opponent 
 of the Eicardian doctrine, that it is in the un- 
 heard-of and unthought-of extension which he 
 gives to the scope of the principle of rent, that 
 the essence of his teaching consists. 
 
 Let us now proceed to state Mr. George's 
 position affirmatively. As we have agreed, for 
 the purposes of the present discussion,^ to con- 
 cede the sufficiency of his refutation of the 
 doctrine of Malthus, we will, for simplicity, 
 follow Mr. George only through his analysis 
 of the effects of rent acting upon stationary 
 populations. 
 
 This cannot fail to receive his assent, since 
 he declares that "land, being held as private 
 property, would produce in a stationary pop- 
 ulation all the eifects attributed by the Mal- 
 thusian doctrine to pressure of population." 
 
 What, then, is Mr. George's position ? Just 
 
 1 Only for the sake of the discussion. The writer is a 
 thorough believer in the validity of the doctrine of Malthus 
 as restated by Mr. Mill. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 151 
 
 this : " Irrespective of the increase of population^ 
 the effect of improvements in methods of produc- 
 tion and exchange is to increase rent!' The 
 proof of this proposition is as follows, in his 
 own words : — 
 
 "Demand is not a fixed quantity that in- 
 creases only as population increases. In each 
 individual it rises with his power of getting the 
 things demanded. . . . 
 
 "The amount of wealth produced is nowhere 
 commensurate with the desire for wealth; and 
 desire mounts with every additional opportu- 
 nity for gratification. 
 
 " This being the case, the effect of labor-saving 
 improvements will be to increase the produc- 
 tion of wealth. Now, for the production of 
 wealth, two things are required, labor and 
 land. Therefore the effect of labor-saving im- 
 provements will be to extend the demand for 
 land, and wherever the limit of the quality of 
 land in use is reached, to bring into cultivation 
 lands of less natural productiveness, or to extend 
 cultivation on the same lands to a point of lower 
 natural productiveness. And thus, while the 
 primary effect of labor-saving improvements is 
 to increase the power of labor, the secondary 
 effect is to extend cultivation, and, where this 
 
152 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 lowers the margin of cultivation, to increase 
 rent. . . . 
 
 " Thus, where land is entirely appropriated, as 
 in England, or where it is either appropriated 
 or is capable of appropriation as rapidly as it 
 is needed for use, as in the United States, the 
 ultimate effect of labor-saving machinery or 
 improvements is to increase rent, without in- 
 creasing wages or interest. 
 
 "It is important that this be fully under- 
 stood, for it shows that effects attributed 
 by current theories to increase of population 
 are really due to the progress of invention, 
 and explains the otherwise perplexing fact that 
 labor-saving machinery everywhere fails to 
 benefit laborers." 
 
 And he concludes, after repeating and further 
 illustrating this view of the effect of produc- 
 tive improvements and inventions, with the 
 following italicized proposition: "Wealth, in 
 all its forms, being the product of labor applied 
 to land, or the products of land, any increase 
 in the power of labor, the demand for wealth 
 being unsatisfied, will be utilized in procuring 
 more wealth, and thus increase the demand for 
 land." And so, to use his own phrase, labor 
 cannot reap the benefits which advancing civi- 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 153 
 
 lization brings, because they are " intercepted," ^ 
 that is, intercepted by rent. 
 
 1 Mr. George draws what he apparently deems a very ap- 
 palling picture of the conceivable, if not possible, conse- 
 quences of this subjection of labor and capital to the land. 
 " As," he says, 'Sve can assign no limits to the progress of 
 invention, neither can we assign any limits to the increase 
 of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-saving 
 inventions went on until perfection ' was attained, and the 
 necessity of labor in the production of wealth was entirely 
 done away with, then everything that the earth could yield 
 could be obtained without labor, and the margin of cultiva- 
 tion would be extended to zero. Wages would be nothing, 
 and interest would be nothing, while rent would take every- 
 thing. For, the owners of the land being enabled without 
 labor to obtain all the wealth that could be procured from 
 nature, there would be no use for either labor or capital, and 
 no possible way in which either could compel any share of 
 the wealth produced." All this is said seriously, as if it 
 were of some consequence. Yet one cannot help asking ; 
 Well, what of it ? Why should there be any wages, if there 
 were no labor? What are wages? Mr. George himself de- 
 fines both labor and wages as follows : ' ' The term ' labor ' 
 includes all human exertion in the production of wealth ; 
 and wages, being that part of the produce which goes to 
 labor, includes all reward for such exertion." 
 
 Very good, as it is very familiar. But if a state of things 
 were reached such as Mr. George contemplates, in which 
 there were no labor, no exertion of human powers or facul- 
 ties in the production of wealth, why, in the name of equity, 
 should there be any wages, the reward for such exertion ? 
 
 And if there were no capital, why should there be any in- 
 terest, the recompense of capital ? What is capital ? Accord- 
 
154 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 That it may not be supposed that I am in 
 any way misrepresenting Mr. George, or omit- 
 ting any qualification of his propositions, I 
 quote another extended paragraph, in his own 
 words. 
 
 " Land being necessary to labor, and being re- 
 duced to private ownership, every increase in the 
 productive power of labor but increases reiit, — 
 the price that labor must pay for the opportu- 
 nity to utilize its powers ; and thus all the ad- 
 vantages gained by the march of progress go to 
 the owners of land and luages do not increase. 
 Wages cannot increase; for, the greater the 
 earnings of labor, the greater the price that 
 labor must pay out of its earnings for the op- 
 portunity to make any earnings at all. The 
 mere laborer has thus no more interest in the 
 general advance of productive power than 
 the Cuban slave has in advance in the price 
 of sugar. And just as an advance in the price 
 of sugar may make the condition of the slave 
 worse, by inducing the master to drive him 
 
 ing to Mr. George it is " only a part of wealth, — that part, 
 namely, which is devoted to the aid of production." But if 
 no wealth were to be devoted to production, as on Mr. 
 George's supposition, then there would be no capital. If no 
 capital, why any interest ? 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 155 
 
 harder, so may the condition of the free laborer 
 be povsitively, as well as relatively, changed for 
 the worse by the increase in the productive 
 power of his labor. For, begotten of the con- 
 tinuous advance of rents, arises a speculative 
 tendency which discounts the effect of future 
 improvements by a still further advance of 
 rent." 
 
 The last sentence introduces Mr. George's 
 second count in his arraignment of rent, as the 
 great social criminal. 
 
 Please carefully to note the point. The im- 
 mediate and direct effect of any addition, from 
 whatever source, to the productive power of 
 labor, is to increase rents by just the same 
 amount, so that nothing is left to go either 
 into enhanced wages or enhanced profits, the 
 landlord taking the entire increase, whatever 
 that may be. 
 
 But now another force enters, actually to 
 deplete the already starving laborer. This is 
 the speculative advance in land, owing to the 
 expectation of further increments of value at 
 the expense of the community. 
 
 " We have," says Mr. George, " hitherto as- 
 sumed, as is generally assumed in elucidations 
 of the theory of rent, that the acUml margin of 
 
156 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 cultivation always coincides with what may be 
 termed the necessary margin of cultivation, — 
 that is to say, we have assumed that cultivation 
 extends to less productive points only as it 
 becomes necessary from the fact that natural 
 opportunities are at the more productive points 
 fully utilized. This, probably, is the case in 
 stationary or very slowly progressing commu- 
 nities ; but in rapidly progressing communities, 
 where the swift and steady increase of rent 
 gives confidence to calculations of further in- 
 crease, it is not the case. In such commu- 
 nities, the confident expectation of increased 
 prices produces, to a greater or less extent, the 
 effects of a combination among land-holders, 
 and tends to the withholding of land from use, 
 in expectation of higher prices, thus forcing the 
 margin of cultivation farther than required by 
 the necessities of production." 
 
 But this is not the end of the mischief at- 
 tending the private ownership of land. We 
 have now the third and final count in this 
 arraignment. The speculative holding of land, 
 just described, becomes, in turn, the cause of 
 incessant industrial disturbance, and of those 
 great periodic convulsions of production and 
 trade which involve the labormg classes, poor. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 157 
 
 inert, and unapt to travel or to change of occu- 
 pation, in the deepest distress. How can this 
 be ? Mr. George is equal to the occasion. 
 
 " Production," he says, in explanation of an 
 assumed industrial crisis, " has somewhere been 
 checked, and this reduction in the supply of 
 some things has shown itself in cessation of de- 
 mand for others, the check propagating itself 
 through the whole framework of industry and 
 exchange. Now, the industrial pyramid mani- 
 festly rests on the land. 
 
 " The primary and fundamental occupations, 
 which create a demand for all others, are evi- 
 dently those which extract wealth from nature, 
 and hence, if v/e trace from one exchange point 
 to another, and from one occupation to another, 
 this check to production, which shows itself in 
 decreased purchasing power, we must ultimately 
 find it in some obstacle which checks labor in 
 expending itself on land. 
 
 " And that obstacle, it is clear, is the specu- 
 lative advance in rent, or the value of land, 
 whicli produces the same effects as (in fact, it 
 is) a lock-out of labor and capital by land-own- 
 ers. This check to production, beginning at 
 the basis of interlaced industry, propagates it- 
 self from exchange point to exchange point. 
 
158 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 cessation of supply becoming failure of demand, 
 until, so to speak, the whole machine is thrown 
 out of gear, and the spectacle is everywhere 
 presented of labor going to waste while laborers 
 suffer from want." 
 
 This concludes Mr. George's arraignment of 
 private property in land. If these successive 
 counts can be sustained, he is fully borne out in 
 his conclusion that " the necessary result of ma- 
 terial progress — land being private property — 
 is, no matter luliat the increase in loopulation, to 
 force laborers to wages which give but a bare 
 living;" or, as he elsewhere expresses it, that 
 " material progress does not merely fail to re- 
 lieve poverty, it actually produces it ; " or, again, 
 that, " whatever be the increase of productive 
 power, rent steadily tends to swallow up the 
 gain and more than the gain ; " or, agam, that 
 " the ownership of the land on which and from 
 which a man must live, is virtually the owner- 
 ship of the man himself, and in acknowledging 
 the right of some individuals to the exclusive 
 use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn 
 other individuals to slavery, as fully and as 
 completely as though we had formally made 
 them chattels." 
 
 To a man who believed but a small fraction 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 159 
 
 of this, the conclusion which Mr. George an- 
 nounces at the close of the following paragraph 
 would appear irresistible : — 
 
 "As long as this institution exists, no in- 
 crease in productive power can permanently 
 benefit the masses, but, on the contrary, must 
 tend to still further depress their condition. . . . 
 Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages 
 are forced down while productive power grows, 
 because land, which is the source of all wealth 
 and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To 
 extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice 
 commands they should be, the full earnings of 
 the laborer, we must therefore substitute for 
 the individual ownership of land a common 
 ownership." 
 
 I believe I have presented, in the foregoing 
 extracts, every essential feature of Mr. George's 
 economic system, without suppression or per- 
 version. His practical recommendations for 
 the carrying out of his proposal for the na- 
 tionalization of the land cannot be politically 
 very important, since matters of this sort are 
 generally left to statesmen, not to economists ; 
 and even should the abolition of private prop- 
 erty be decreed at the approaching session of 
 Congress, there is too much reason to fear that 
 
160 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Mr. George would not be called in to adjust 
 the details of the scheme. Those recommenda- 
 tions are, however, if not politically important, 
 psychologically interesting, and serve to give an 
 idea as to the kind of person this apostle of a 
 regenerated humanity may be, and as to the 
 sort of society in which he has been bred. 
 
 " I do not," he says, " propose either to pur- 
 chase or to confiscate private property in land. 
 . . . Let the individuals who now hold it, still 
 retain, if they want to, possession of what they 
 are pleased to call their land. Let them con- 
 tinue to call it tlieir land. Let them buy and 
 sell and bequeath and devise it. We may 
 safely leave them the shell, if we take the 
 kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; 
 it is only necessary to confiscate rent." 
 
 "What I propose," he exclaims, in a fine 
 glow of enthusiasm, " as the simple yet sov- 
 ereign remedy, which will raise wages, increase 
 the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, 
 abolish poverty, give remunerative employment 
 to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to hu- 
 man powers, lessen crime, elevate morals and 
 taste and intelligence, purify government, and 
 carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is — 
 to appropriate rent by taxation." 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 161 
 
 Of course, the present owners of the land — 
 many, perhaps most, of whom have, under the ex- 
 press sanction and encouragement of the State, 
 bought it, perhaps even from the State itself, 
 paying the price into the treasury — will be 
 compensated when their property or the entire 
 value thereof shall thus be "confiscated" for 
 public uses. Mr. George rejects the suggestion 
 with indignation. He even pities Mr. Mill for 
 having had the weakness to admit ^ the land- 
 owner's claim to compensation : " Great as he 
 was, and pure as he was, warm heart and noble 
 mind, he never yet saw the true harmony of 
 economic laws." 
 
 But there are the improvements, urges Mr. 
 George's reader, which have become blended 
 with and inseparable from the soil. ''Very 
 well," he cheerfully replies ; " then the title to 
 the improvements becomes blended with the 
 title to the land, the individual right is lost in 
 the common right. . . . Nature does not pro- 
 ceed from man, but man from nature ; and it 
 is into the bosom of nature that he and all his 
 works must return again." What a thing it is 
 to be a philosopher, and see " the true harmony 
 of economic laws " ! 
 
 1 See ante, p. 24. 
 11 
 
162 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Since such consequences, not only destructive 
 of the established order of industrial society, 
 but subversive also, it would seem, of ordinary 
 honesty, are to be drawn from Mr. George's 
 discovery of the enormous and previously un- 
 suspected importance of rent as a factor in the 
 distribution of wealth, let us somewhat care- 
 fully analyze the arguments by which his prop- 
 ositions under this head are established. 
 
 Let us take up, in their inverse order, Mr. 
 George's three capital propositions.^ And, first, 
 how much is there in the view that commercial 
 disturbance and industrial depression are due 
 chiefly to the speculative holding of land ? 
 
 That land, in its own degree, shares with 
 other species of property in the speculative 
 impulses of exchange, is a matter of course. 
 Everybody knows it; no one ever thought of 
 denying it. Mr. George makes no point against 
 private property in land, however, unless he 
 can show that it is, of all species of property, 
 
 1 I do not insist upon the consideration, though, both rele- 
 vant and important, in this connection, that whereas Mr. 
 George's argument assumes that the rents paid by the mem- 
 bers of society are the full economic rents under the Ricar- 
 dian formula, those rents are, in fact, in most communities, 
 greatly reduced by the operation of the forces indicated on 
 pp. 42-51. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 163 
 
 peculiarly the subject of speculative impulses. 
 Now, this is so far from being either self-evi- 
 dent or established by adequate induction, that 
 the contrary is the general opinion of eco- 
 nomic writers. Of all species of property, land, 
 especially agricultural land, starts latest and 
 stops earliest in any upward movement of 
 prices, as induced, for instance, by a paper- 
 money inflation, which perhaps affords the best 
 opportunity for the study of purely speculative 
 impulses. 
 
 Of course, there are circumstances under 
 which those impulses may especially attack 
 land, and a wild " rig " may be run in the mar- 
 ket for this commodity, as, at other times, in 
 the market for government stocks, or mines, or 
 railways, or Dutch tulips, or what not. 
 
 A very striking instance of the possibilities 
 of speculation in this direction is afforded by 
 the history of land in California. The opening 
 of the Pacific railways in 1868 aroused the most 
 extravagant expectations of a rise in the value 
 of land. Mr. George says, and perhaps truly, 
 that lots in the outskirts of San Francisco " rose 
 hundreds and thousands per cent," and a period 
 of wild speculation ensued. Mr. George ap- 
 pears to have been profoundly affected by his 
 
164 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 observation of this episode. What was purely 
 local and accidental, he has magnified into a 
 universal cause of speculation. 
 
 " What," he remarks, " thus went on in Cali- 
 fornia, went on in every progressive section of 
 the Union ; " and this land speculation he 
 makes the primary and principal cause of the 
 panic of 1873. 
 
 It is difficult to say what Mr. George, with 
 his peculiar ideas, may regard as the progres- 
 sive and what as the retrogressive or stationary 
 sections of the Union; but throughout the 
 regions which, between 1868 and 1873, com- 
 prised more than two thirds of the accumu- 
 lated wealth of the country, and did more than 
 three fourths of its trading and more than five 
 sixths of its manufacturing, agricultural land 
 was not the subject of a speculative enhance- 
 ment of values. On the contrary, the value of 
 farms was, on the whole, depressed relatively to 
 other objects of exchange, throughout the period 
 when the catastrophe of 1873 was preparing. 
 
 We now come to Mr. George's second count. 
 
 The allegation that the enhancement of the 
 value of land, above what should be regarded 
 as the capitalized value of its present productive 
 or income-yielding power, withdraws large bodies 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 165 
 
 of land from cultivation, thus driving labor 
 and capital to poorer and more distant soils, in 
 order to secure the needed subsistence of the 
 community can only be characterized, so far 
 as all the agricultural ^ uses of land are con- 
 cerned, as a baseless assumption, for which not 
 a particle of proper statistical proof can be 
 adduced, and which is directly contrary to the 
 reason of the case. 
 
 Because, forsooth, a man is holding a tract 
 of land in the hope of a rise in its value years 
 hence, does that constitute any reason why he 
 should refuse to rent it, this year or next, and 
 get from it what he can, were it no more than 
 enough to pay his taxes and a part of the in- 
 terest on the money borrowed to "carry" the 
 property ? 
 
 Every financier knows how difficult it is to 
 secure a loan on the mortgage of unimproved 
 property, at anything approaching the value 
 at which the owner holds it. What is this 
 but testimony to the unwillingness of most 
 men, cu'cumstanced as they find themselves, to 
 put their wealth into forms which imply that 
 there is to be, for a number of years, all outgo 
 
 1 It will be observed that in the extracts quoted it is 
 cultivation which is spoken of. 
 
166 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 and no income, however great the final profit 
 anticijDated ? How unreasonable, then, to as- 
 sume that men owning good productive land 
 will refuse to allow it to be cultivated now, 
 simply because they cannot get for it a rent 
 which corresponds to what they look forward 
 ultimately to realize as its capital price ! 
 
 Undoubtedly the speculative treatment of 
 building lots does cause a certain amount of city 
 real estate to be held out of use. Nobody 
 needed Mr. George to tell him this ; but that 
 the amount of land so reserved is such as seri- 
 ously to retard the development of population, 
 trade, or manufactures, except in a craze like 
 that which seized the people of San Francisco 
 in 1868, seems highly improbable. 
 
 Let us now proceed to deal with Mr. George's 
 main proposition, the proposition to which the 
 others are subsidiary. If this be established, it 
 really does not matter much whether the others 
 be true or not, for the condition of humanity 
 under the grinding pressure of this main force 
 will be about as bad as it could be ; while, if 
 this be disproved, Mr. George's whole system 
 must break down ridiculously, leaving it to 
 matter little whether the minor evils attributed 
 to the private ownership of land be found to 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPERTY. 167 
 
 have any real existence or not. This it is which 
 constitutes the original feature of Mr. George's 
 book, that upon which the value of his mission 
 as a public teacher depends, that by which he 
 must stand or fall, — the proposition, namely, 
 that, " irrespective of the increase of population, 
 the effect of improvements in methods of pro- 
 duction and exchange is to increase rent ; " this 
 effect being carried so far that " all the advan- 
 tages gained by the march of progress go to 
 the owners of land, and wages do not increase," 
 the laboring man having " no more interest 
 in the general advance of productive power than 
 the Cuban slave has in advance in the price 
 of sugar," capital also, in its turn, suffering, and 
 to an equal extent, since, as Mr. George states, 
 the effect of labor-saving machinery or im- 
 provements is to increase rent without increas- 
 ing either wages or interest. 
 
 Now this is not only false, but ridiculously 
 false, blunder being piled on blunder, to reach 
 a conclusion so monstrous. 
 
 In the first place, the proposition is contra- 
 dicted by plain facts of common observation 
 and by unimpeachable testimony of industrial 
 statistics. The laborer has gained in wages 
 through the labor-saving inventions and im- 
 
168 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 provements of modern times. Speaking of 
 England, Sir James Caird says : " The laborer's 
 earning power in procuring the staff of life cost 
 him five days' work to pay for a bushel of 
 wheat in 1770, four days' in 1840, and two and 
 a half days' in 1870." So much for bread. 
 " Thirty years ago," says Sir James, " probably 
 not one third of the people of this country con- 
 sumed animal food more than once a week. 
 Now, nearly all of them eat it in meat or 
 cheese or butter, once a day." The same high 
 authority adds : " The laborer is better lodged 
 than he ever was before." We need no one to 
 tell us that the laborer's power to purchase 
 manufactured articles has increased, since 1770, 
 much more rapidly than his power to pur- 
 chase agricultural produce, whether animal or 
 vegetable. 
 
 To the assertion of Mr. George that even 
 the capitalist gains nothing by inventions and 
 improvements in the agencies of trade or man- 
 ufactures, because the landlord usurps and 
 absorbs all possible increase of productive 
 power, what better answer can we give than 
 that of Professor Emile de Laveleye, himself 
 a qualified advocate of the state ownership 
 of land? 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 169 
 
 "Who occupy the pretty houses and villas 
 which are springing up in every direction in all 
 prosperous towns ? Certainly, more than two 
 thirds of these occupants are fresh capitalists. 
 The value of capital engaged in industrial 
 enterprise exceeds that of land itself, and its 
 power of accumulation is far greater than that 
 of ground rents. The immense fortunes amassed 
 so rapidly in the United States, like those of 
 Mr. Gould and Mr. Vanderbilt, were the results 
 of railway speculation, and not of the greater 
 value of land. 
 
 "We see, then, that the increase of profits 
 and of interest takes a much larger proportion 
 of the total value of labor, and is a more 
 general and powerful cause of inequality, than 
 the increase of rent."^ 
 
 So much for industrial statistics and facts of 
 common observation. Let us now turn to the 
 reason" of the case. And, first, let us recite 
 Mr. George's own argument. " The effect," he 
 says, " of labor-saving improvements will be to 
 increase the production of wealth. Now, for 
 the production of wealth, two things are re- 
 quired, — labor and land. Therefore the effect 
 of labor-saving improvements will be to extend 
 the demand for land." 
 
 1 Contemporary Eeview, November, 1882. 
 
170 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 A pretty piece of reasoning this ! A mono- 
 graph by Mr. George upon the significance of 
 the word "therefore" is really a desideratum 
 of systematic logic. Two things are needed 
 for the production of wealth, land and labor; 
 therefore an increase of production will increase 
 the demand for land, forsooth ! But luliy not 
 also for labor, since both are concerned in pro- 
 duction ? Was there ever a more senseless 
 blunder ? But Mr. George is further in error, 
 even, than would so far appear. He has got 
 the thing exactly wrong. It is not only true 
 that an increased production of wealth may 
 involve an enhanced demand for labor as well 
 as for land, but it is also incontestably true 
 that the increased production of wealth rarely 
 if ever causes an increased demand for land 
 without a corresponding demand for labor, 
 while, on the contrary, an increased production 
 of wealth may cause an enormous increase in 
 the demand for labor without enhancing the 
 demand for the products of the soil in any 
 degree whatsoever. 
 
 Here is a pound of raw cotton, the production 
 of which makes a certain demand, or drain, upon 
 the land. To that cotton may be applied the 
 labor of one operative for half an hour, worth, 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 171 
 
 say, 5 cents. Successive demands for the pro- 
 duction of wealth may lead to the application 
 of, first, a full hour's labor, then of two hours', 
 then of three, four, or five ; finer and finer fab- 
 rics being successively produced, until at last 
 the pound of cotton has been wrought into the 
 most exquisite articles. Mr. George says that 
 the whole effect of any increase in the pro- 
 duction of wealth is to enhance the demand 
 for land. Here is a large increase of produc- 
 tion, twofold, threefold, tenfold, perhaps, with 
 no additional demand, or drain, upon the 
 soil. 
 
 But I go further, and assert, without fear of 
 contradiction, that not only is no increase in 
 the demand for land necessarily involved in an 
 increased production of wealth, but that the 
 enhancement of the demand for land, in the 
 progress of society, habitually falls short of 
 the enhancement of the demand for labor, the 
 increase of production taking two great forms, — 
 one which involves no increase whatever in 
 the materials derived from the soil : the other in 
 which the increased demand for land falls 
 short, generally far short, often almost infinitely 
 short, of the increased demand for labor. 
 
 Let us look around. I have cited one in- 
 
172 LAND AND ITS KENT. 
 
 stance, that of the use made in the mill of 
 a pound of cotton, manufactured successively 
 into fabrics worth, perhaps, 20 cents a pound, 
 then 30, then 50, then $1.00. This is not an 
 extreme case. 
 
 Here is the rude furniture of a laborer's cot- 
 tage, worth perhaps S30. The same amount 
 of wood may be made into furniture worth 
 $200 for the home of the clerk, or into furni- 
 ture worth $2,000 for the home of the banker. 
 The steel that would be needed to make a cheap 
 scythe worth 80 cents may be rendered into 
 watch-springs, or surgical or philosophical in- 
 struments worth $100 or $200. The actual ma- 
 terial derived from the soil which would go into 
 a picture by a master, worth thousands, makes a 
 smaller draught upon the productive essences of 
 the soil than a chromo of the Prodigal's Eeturn, 
 sold from a cart for $2, frame included. These 
 are, of course, extreme cases, taken purposely, 
 with a view to show briefly and graphically the 
 range of values that may be produced in dealing 
 with the same quantity of material drawn from 
 the soil. That range, however, is always great 
 as applied to almost any class of expenditures. 
 A gentleman of means goes to Delmonico's, and 
 pays $2, $3, or $5 for a dinner which makes no 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 17o 
 
 heavier drain upon the productive essences of 
 the soil than a dinner of corned beef and cab- 
 bage for which a laborer pays 25 cents. A 
 part of the difference between the prices of the 
 two dinnerS; to be sure, represents the cost 
 of an expensive business "stand" on Fifth 
 Avenue ; but by far the greater part represents 
 service of one kind or another, at one stage 
 or another, in making the dishes exquisite in 
 appearance and flavor, in serving them neatly 
 and elegantly with all the appliances of taste 
 and fashion. Our gentleman, before dining, 
 had perhaps been measured for a pair of boots, 
 for which he was to pay $12 or $15, yet con- 
 taining no more leather, and so making no more 
 draught upon the productive essences of the soil, 
 in the way of nourishing the animal from which 
 the leather was cut, than the laborer's $3 pair 
 of " stogies ; " he had also ordered a suit of 
 clothes for $60 or $75, at his tailor's, no thicker, 
 no warmer, containing no more fibre, than the 
 laborer's $15 tweeds. In all these cases (and 
 they fairly represent the facts of personal con- 
 sumption in modern society) the main cause for 
 the excess of value in products of higher price 
 is not the use of a larger quantity of material, 
 involving a greater demand or drain upon the 
 
174 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 productive essences of the soil, but the appli- 
 cation of more labor to the same quantity of 
 material. 
 
 In contradiction, then, of Mr. George's propo- 
 sition that the entire effect of an increase of 
 production is expended in raising rents, neither 
 wages nor the interest of capital deriving any 
 gain whatsoever therefrom, rent indeed absorb- 
 ing the entire gain, " and more than the gain," 
 we have seen, — 
 
 1. That an increase of production onay en- 
 hance the demand for labor equally with the 
 demand for land. 
 
 2. That, in fact, in those forms of production 
 which especially characterize modern society, 
 the rate of enhancement of the demand for 
 labor tends to far exceed the rate of enhance- 
 ment of the demand for land. 
 
 3. That an increased demand for the produc- 
 tion of wealth may, and in a vast body of in- 
 stances does, enhance the demand for labor 
 without enhancing the demand for land in any, 
 the slightest degree, the whole effect being ex- 
 pended in the elaboration of the same amount 
 of material. 
 
 4. We have now only to show, in the fourth 
 place, that, instead of all improvements and in- 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 175 
 
 ventions increasing the demand for land, as Mr. 
 George declares, some very extensive classes of 
 improvements and inventions actually operate 
 powerfully, directly, and exclusively in reduc- 
 ing tlie demand for land, — we have, I say, only 
 to show this, to convict this would-be apostle 
 of a new political economy and a regenerated 
 humanity, of the grossest incompetence for eco- 
 nomic reasoning. This it will be easy to do. 
 
 By far the larger proportion of all improve- 
 ments and inventions fall naturally under one 
 or another of three great classes, — first, those 
 which affect manufacturing industry; second, 
 those which affect transportation; third, those 
 which affect the cultivation of the soil. 
 
 Of these three classes it has always been 
 admitted by economists that the first tends to 
 enhance the demand for land, and thus to raise 
 rents, although not necessarily, or indeed usu- 
 ally, without also enhancing the demand for 
 labor and capital, and 'thus raising wages and 
 interest. The two remaining classes of im- 
 provements and inventions tend directly, and 
 indeed operate exclusively, ^ to reduce the de- 
 mand for land, leaving, thus, the whole advan- 
 
 1 "Irrespective of the increase of population," to use 
 Mr. George's own voluntary qualification. 
 
176 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 tage of such improvements and inventions to 
 be acquired by either labor or capital, or, in one 
 proportion or another, by both labor and capi- 
 tal, in enhanced wages or interest. 
 
 And, first, of improvements in transporta- 
 tion. I need not waste time in calling to mind 
 the mighty strides which invention has made, 
 during the past fifty years, in this direction, 
 substituting for the sailing vessel of 400 tons, 
 which carried its petty cargo of wheat in forty 
 or sixty days from New York to Liverpool, the 
 steamship of 5,000 tons, which makes the pas- 
 sage in nine days or twelve ; substituting for 
 the tedious wagon carriage which in forty or 
 fifty miles, perhaps in twenty or thirty only, 
 ate up the whole value of the freight,^ carriage 
 by steam cars, drawn on steel rails, which, 
 allowing for transport from Dakota to New 
 York, leaves enough of the value of the freight 
 to pay for the ocean passage and for the sup- 
 port of the producer upon those distant plains. 
 Add the telegraph and the fast mail, for trans- 
 
 1 The enormous and speedily destructive cost of wagon 
 carriage may be seen in the fact, recited by Professor Eoscher, 
 that, according to the instructions of the Koyal Saxon Com- 
 mission, the cost of hauling manure is assumed to be 10 per 
 cent higher for a distance of 250 rods, and 20 per cent higher 
 for a distance of 500 rods. 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 177 
 
 mitting orders and transacting sales, and one 
 will hardly question the assertion that the 
 greatest of all the classes of improvements and 
 inventions effected within the last half-century, 
 has been that which relates to transportation. 
 
 Is it the effect of improvements of this class 
 to enhance rents ? Absolutely and exclusively 
 the reverse. Whatever quickens and cheapens 
 transport, acts directly in the reduction of 
 rents,^ and cannot act in any other way, since 
 it throws out of cultivation the poorer lands 
 previously in use for the supply of the market, 
 enabling the better soils at a distance to take 
 their place, thus raising the lower limit, or, as 
 it is called, the "margin" of cultivation, and 
 thus reducing rents. 
 
 But, secondly, take the case of agricultural 
 improvements and inventions. Here the effect 
 upon rents is not so simple or direct ; but it is 
 not the less certain in the result. The case 
 cannot be better stated than in the language of 
 Mr. Mill, which I will quote at length. 
 
 After premising that improved processes of 
 agriculture are of two kinds, — one consisting of 
 those which do not increase the produce, but 
 diminish the labor and expense by which that 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 23-26. 
 12 
 
178 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 produce is obtained, such as the improved con- 
 struction of tools or the introduction of new 
 instruments which spare manual labor, like the 
 winnowing and threshing machines ; the other 
 class consisting of those improvements which 
 enable the land to yield a greater absolute pro- 
 duce without an equivalent increase of labor, 
 such as the disuse of fallows by means of the 
 rotation of crops, — the introduction of new veg- 
 etable species, either of a nature to "rest the 
 land," in alternation, by calling upon the soil 
 for different properties, or of a nature which 
 enables them to afford a greater amount of sub- 
 sistence for men or animals in proportion to the 
 draught made upon the land, — the introduction 
 of new and more powerful fertilizing agents or a 
 better application of familiar manures, — inven- 
 tions, too, like subsoil ploughing or tile-drain- 
 ing, etc., — Mr. Mill says, "By the former 
 
 OF THE TWO KINDS OF IMPROVEMENT, RENT 
 WOULD BE DIMINISHED J BY THE SECOND, IT 
 WOULD BE DIMINISHED STILL MORE." 
 
 The following is Mr. Mill's demonstration of 
 these propositions : '' Suppose that the demand 
 for food requires the cultivation of three quali- 
 ties of land, yielding, on an equal surface, and 
 at an equal expense, 100, 80, and 60 bushels of 
 
ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 179 
 
 wheat. The price of wheat will, on the aver- 
 age, be just sufficient to enable the third qual- 
 ity to be cultivated with the ordinary profit. 
 The first quality, therefore, will yield 40 and 
 the second 20 bushels of extra profit, consti- 
 tuting the rent of the landlord. 
 
 " And, first, let an improvement be made, 
 which, without enabling more corn to be grown, 
 enables the same corn to be grown with one 
 fourth less labor. The price of wheat will fall 
 one fourth, and 80 bushels will be sold for the 
 price for which 60 were sold before. But the 
 produce of the land which produces 60 bushels 
 is still required, and, the expenses being as 
 much reduced as the price, the land can still 
 be cultivated with the ordinary profit. The 
 first and second qualities will, therefore, con- 
 tinue to yield a surplus of 40 and 20 bushels, 
 and corn-rent will remain the same as before. 
 But, corn having fallen in price one fourth, the 
 same corn-rent is equivalent to a fourth less of 
 money, and of all other commodities. 
 
 "If the improvement is of the other kind, 
 rent will fall in a still greater ratio. Suppose 
 that the amount of produce which the mar- 
 ket requires, can be grown not only with a 
 fourth less of labor, but on a fourth less of land. 
 
180 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 If all the land already in cnltivation continued 
 to be cultivated, it would yield a produce much 
 larger than necessary. Land equivalent to a 
 fourth of the produce must now be abandoned ; 
 and as the third quality yielded exactly one 
 fourth (being 60 out of 240), that quality will 
 go out of cultivation. The 240 bushels can 
 now be grown on land of the first and second 
 qualities only ; being, on the first, 100 bushels 
 plus one third, or 133 J bushels ; on the second, 
 80 bushels plus one third, or 106f bushels; 
 together, 240. The second quality of land, 
 instead of the third, is now the lowest, and 
 regulates the price. Instead of 60, it is suffi- 
 cient if 106f bushels repay the capital with 
 the ordinary profit. The price of wheat will 
 consequently fall, not in the ratio of 60 to 80, 
 as in the other case, but in the ratio of 60 to 
 106f . Even this gives an insufficient idea of 
 the degree in which rent will be affected. The 
 whole produce of the second quality of land 
 will now be required to repay the expenses of 
 production. That land, being the worst in culti- 
 vation, will pay no rent. And the first quality 
 will only yield the difference between 133 J 
 bushels and 106f, being 26f bushels instead of 
 40. The landlords collectively will have lost 
 
ATTACKS UPOX LANDED PEOPERTY. 181 
 
 33J out of 60 bushels in corn-rent alone, while 
 the value and price of what is left will have 
 been diminished in the ratio of 60 to 106 1." 
 
 Surely there can be no need to pursue the 
 subject. I think we may conclude that we 
 have nothing to learn from Mr. George about 
 either land or rent, but that we may safely go 
 back to our old teachers, Eicardo, Senior, and 
 Mill. 
 
 The true economic law of rent was correctly 
 apprehended, fully stated, and clearly illus- 
 trated by the great economist who has given 
 his name thereto. The attempts of Messrs. Bas- 
 tiat^ and Carey ^ to overthrow that doctrine 
 have completely failed to shake a single pillar in 
 the majestic structure of Eicardo's argument. 
 
 The application of that principle, with how- 
 ever much of laxity or severity,^ to the various 
 grades of soil contributing to the supply of any 
 market, will always make rent a most impor- 
 tant element in the distribution of wealth. 
 The labored efforts of M. Leroy-Beaulieu * to 
 disparage rent, by provmg that the landlord's 
 share is destined soon to disappear as an ele- 
 ment in the distribution of wealth, can com- 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 57-75. ^ See pp. 42-51. 
 
 2 See pp. 75-108. * gee pp. 109-120. 
 
182 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 mand little conviction in the face of the fact 
 stated by Sir James Caird, that the cost of im- 
 portation from the American wheat-fields, in 
 spite of all the vast inventions and discoveries 
 of the past fifty years in the arts of transport, 
 still affords a natural protection to English 
 corn-lands equal, on the average, to 40 shil- 
 lings an acre. 
 
 On the other hand, the extravagant asser- 
 tions and passionate declamations of Mr. GJ-eorge 
 avail just as little to establish his view of the 
 overwhelming importance of rent, as a factor 
 in the distribution of the joint produce of land, 
 labor, and capital, among the several classes 
 taking part in its production. 
 
 The relations of the land to labor and to cap- 
 ital, in the distribution of wealth, are very 
 nearly what we have heretofore been accus- 
 tomed to consider them to be, — • what our old 
 masters taught us they were. Thus far, at 
 least, there has been little to learn from the 
 prophets of a new economic dispensation. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 183 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 
 
 N tlie present chapter I propose to offer some 
 suggestions regarding that tenure of the land 
 which is best suited to advance the interests 
 of society as a whole. 
 
 The first question which arises is this : Shall 
 land be regarded solely as an instrument of 
 production, or shall other aspects of the land 
 be considered by the economist in writing of 
 the tenure of the soil, and by the statesman in 
 dealing with the land as it comes within the 
 scope of legislation ? The answer to this ques- 
 tion is all-important. Economists generally, 
 though not without many and unportant ex- 
 ceptions, have been disposed to hold that land 
 should be regarded merely as an instrument of 
 production. Let the soil, they have said, be 
 cultivated in that way, under that system, 
 which will secure the largest aggregate pro- 
 duce for a given amount of labor and capital, 
 
184 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 or will secure tlie required quantity of produce 
 with tlie least application of labor and capital ; 
 and let us trust to the natural operation of 
 economic forces to bring about the proper di- 
 vision of the produce among individuals and 
 classes. If one system will, as contrasted 
 with any and all other systems, yield a larger 
 amount of vegetable and animal food, of fibre 
 for clothing, and of fuel for warmth, the presump- 
 tion must be that, by adoptiag that system, 
 each individual and each class of producers 
 will be the better off, since there is a larger 
 amount in the aggregate to be divided, while 
 the natural operation of the principle of self- 
 interest will effect a distribution at least 
 approximating, in reasonableness and natural 
 justice, that which would be effected under any 
 other, the most favorable, system of produc- 
 tion. In a word, no matter what the position 
 of the individual member of the industrial so- 
 ciety is, as producer, he will, as consumer, find 
 his true interest in the largest production of 
 wealth. 
 
 The reader will recall the similar debate 
 which has long been held over the same ques- 
 tion in its application to mechanical industry, 
 especially as developed into what we call a 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 185 
 
 manufacturing system. Here the English and 
 American economists, ahnost without excep- 
 tion, — and perhaps we may say also the econo- 
 mists of the Continent, though not without 
 numerous and important exceptions, — have 
 held that the general interest was to be found 
 in the largest production of wealth. Let labor 
 be divided and still subdivided ; let occupations 
 become diversified, and industries specialized and 
 localized, as fully as may be involved in the 
 largest possible application of machinery and 
 elemental power, and in the realization of the 
 highest amount of productive efficiency from 
 the mass of productive agents ; have no care 
 concerning the position which the mass of 
 laborers shall occupy in the industrial order, 
 whether they shall be hired or self-employed, 
 whether they shall or shall not be individually 
 accomplished in any art which could enable 
 them to earn a livelihood by exertions outside 
 that industrial order; indeed, let it be frankly 
 assumed that they will, in the vast majority 
 of cases, know but a fraction of a trade, being 
 kept at work, for the sake of the highest effi- 
 ciency, in performmg, year after year, but a 
 single operation, involving perhaps but a single 
 motion ; have no thought regarding the influ- 
 
186 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 ence of sucli an organization of industry upon 
 the physical, intellectual, or moral condition 
 of the laborer ; let him take his place wherever 
 the interests of the largest production assign 
 him, without any reference to the question 
 whether his duties and his surroundings there 
 will tend to the symmetrical development of 
 his powers and faculties, or otherwise. 
 
 In a word, accept cheerfully all the incidents 
 of that organization of industrial society which 
 has been described. Doubtless much evil will 
 ensue ; but four considerations should suffice to 
 reconcile the social philosopher to this condi- 
 tion, — first, that much of the evil would occur 
 under any organization of industrial society ; 
 secondly, that, thanks to the economic harmo- 
 nies, industrial evils are self-limited and tend 
 to disappear ; thirdly, that the gain in produc- 
 tive power, accomplished by the means recited, 
 furnishes a fund with which the individual 
 industrial agent may purchase the means of 
 physical, intellectual, and moral culture which 
 would have been unattainable with a smaller 
 production of wealth, which means of culture, 
 including leisure for social enjoyment and for 
 study, should compensate, and far more than 
 compensate, for the tendency to an incomplete 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 187 
 
 or one-sided development of the individual ; 
 fourthly, that there is a certain virtue in that 
 discipline^ which is the condition of highly 
 organized industry, enforcing punctuality and 
 precision; that there is a certain virtue in sub- 
 jection to the authority of an official superior, 
 on the one side, and to the public sentiment of 
 a class or a corps, on the other, which acts 
 most powerfully upon even the most inconstant 
 mind ; that there is a certain virtue in direct 
 competition with one's fellows, and in the com- 
 parison and criticism of the methods and re- 
 sults of work, which stimulates and quickens 
 even the dullest and least apprehensive. 
 
 However much one may take exception, at 
 points, to the arguments by which the modern 
 industrial order of extended and constantly 
 extending competition is defended, the econo- 
 mists generally have, as was said, accepted the 
 principle that, so far as mechanical labor is con- 
 cerned, society should be organized to accom- 
 
 1 In tliis connection I should do injustice to the reader, 
 did I not refer to the very striking comparison between the 
 Domestic and the Factory systems of industry, in their re- 
 spective effects upon the laboring populations engaged, which 
 is conducted by Colonel C. D. Wright in his report on the 
 Factory System, embodied in the Manufacturing Volume of 
 the Tenth Census. 
 
188 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 plish tlie largest production of wealth, without 
 any care respecting the industrial position of 
 individuals, leaving each to seek his own inter- 
 ests as a consumer of wealth, — to recover, that 
 is, through the greater quantities and lower 
 prices of the comforts, decencies, and luxuries 
 of life, whatever he may have lost through the 
 sacrifice of his independence and self -sufficiency 
 as a producer. 
 
 Two great classes, however, dissent from this 
 conclusion. The socialists declare that the 
 concentration of manufacturing industry, the 
 minute subdivision, and, by consequence, 
 the extreme specialization of labor, under com- 
 mercial freedom and unlimited competition; 
 the principle of association, which, if it do not 
 benefit the great capitalists alone, benefits them 
 in a far higher proportion than persons of small 
 means ; and, lastly, speculation, whose power 
 to engross the wealth of the community in- 
 creases with the extent and complexity of the 
 industrial system, — that these causes yoke pov- 
 erty and progress together ; force wages down 
 as production rises ; exaggerate the natural dis- 
 tinctions of society, ever making the rich richer 
 and the poor poorer, and fixing an impassable 
 barrier between classes and orders of men. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 189 
 
 The protectionists, also, take exception to 
 the proposition that it is the largest production 
 of wealth which, on the whole, best subserves 
 the public interest. The doctrine of protection 
 has no other logical significance than that pro- 
 duction should be crossed along certain lines — 
 the lines of nationality — for the purpose of 
 checking the otherwise irresistible tendency to 
 the division of labor, the diversification of oc- 
 cupations, the specialization and localization 
 of mechanical industry. 
 
 The protectionist entertains, in common with 
 the socialist, a profound distrust of competition, 
 as an agent for returning to the individual mem- 
 ber of society, in his capacity as consumer, what- 
 ever henefits he may lose through the sacrifice of 
 his advantages as a loroducer, believing that, on 
 the contrary, competition tends to exert a very 
 unequal pressure upon the several classes of the 
 community, and that unequal competition is a 
 highly pernicious and possibly destructive force. 
 
 The protectionist rejects, also, the doctrine 
 of the economic harmonies, holding, instead, 
 the theory that economic injuries, once suffered, 
 tend to remain and to deepen, rather than to be 
 removed by the natural operation of the prin- 
 ciple of self-interest. 
 
19.Q LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 To prevent, therefore, the undue extension 
 of the prmciple of competition, the protection- 
 ist proposes, as has been stated, to erect barriers 
 along the boundary lines of nationality.^ 
 
 For myself, I accept the principle of com- 
 petition, in its application to all branches of 
 mechanical labor, without any hesitation and 
 without any reserve except as to that class of 
 restrictions which come fairly within the two 
 titles of Factory Acts and Sanitary Eegula- 
 tions, respecting which I cannot but esteem the 
 
 1 Conceding, for the sake of argument, that the advan- 
 tages of the world-wide extension of the principle of division 
 of labor are more than outweighed by the resulting evils, it 
 will be noted that the theory of protection is palpably weak 
 in the respect that never has anything approaching a serious 
 reason been offered for making industrial units out of exist- 
 ing political units ; allowing production and trade to follow 
 the impulses of competition not only without restraint, but 
 actually under encouragement, to the extreme boundaries of 
 empire, however widely these may be spread, though it were 
 from ocean to ocean or pole to pole, yet forbidding them to 
 cross those boundaries, even in the case of the narrowest State 
 No shadow of a reason has ever yet been given by any pro 
 tectionist for this equivalency, or, rather, conterminateness, 
 of political and industrial entities, while the antecedent im 
 probability of a sufficient reason being found therefor must. 
 in view of the almost infinite range of conditions under 
 which nations exist, in the respects of area, soil, extension in 
 latitude and in longitude, climate and civilization, be con- 
 ceded to be little, if anything, less than hopeless. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 191 
 
 attitude of tlie English and even the Ameri- 
 can economists in the past, and to some 
 extent in the present, as most unfortunate, 
 not only as having been mistaken in point of 
 theory, but as having been the cause of a great 
 part of the jealousy and hostility which the 
 working classes have cherished towards political 
 economy. 
 
 But while I accept freedom of production, 
 with all its consequences, throughout the length 
 and breadth of mechanical industry, with the 
 exception indicated, I cannot but feel that there 
 is a great deal of truth in the descriptions 
 which the socialists and the protectionists give 
 of the deleterious effects of extended competi- 
 tion ; and that the economists — or free-traders, 
 if one chooses to regard the terms as inter- 
 convertible — have committed a controversial 
 error, to put it on the lowest ground, in dis- 
 paraging these evils and even denying their 
 existence. 
 
 The economic harmonies do not prevail ex- 
 cept among populations rarely gifted with intel- 
 ligence and enterprise. Economic injuries do 
 not tend to diminish and to disappear, but to 
 abide and to deepen, imder the natural opera- 
 tion of the principle of self-interest. The rule 
 
192 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 "To liim that hatli shall be given," expresses a 
 law of wide extent and stringent application 
 throughout the sphere of industry. Competi- 
 tion may become a crushing and destructive 
 force, when it is so far unequal that one class, 
 alert and aggressive, wielding large capitals, and 
 acting m concert or with a common understand- 
 ing, exerts a continuous, unremitting pressure 
 upon another class, whose members cannot ade- 
 quately respond to the demand made upon them, 
 in a prompt assertion of their own interests, 
 through change of place or occupation. 
 
 This is so clear in principle, and it is so 
 manifest that the working classes have suffered 
 enormous injuries, enduring injuries, through 
 the operation of unequal competition, in that 
 unceasing struggle for economical vantage- 
 ground which is involved in the highly intense 
 organization of modern industry, as it has been 
 described, that the economists have committed 
 a palpable controversial error in disparaging 
 the importance of these considerations, and 
 even denying them any validity whatever. 
 Had they taken upon themselves the task of 
 investigating the effects of imperfect competi- 
 tion, in frank recognition of the too palpable 
 facts of modern industrial society ; had they 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 193 
 
 undertaken to trace the curve, so to speak, 
 which the principle of self-interest describes, 
 under varying conditions, upon the ground of 
 the general good, showing under what circum- 
 stances the public and the private interest are 
 coincident, under what circumstances the oper- 
 ation of the principle of self-interest, unre- 
 strained, may become, in a higher or lower 
 degree, prejudicial ; and had they been willing 
 to inquire, or even to tolerate the inquiries of 
 others, concerning the means, if any, by which 
 the pressure of an unequal competition may 
 be relieved, — they might have retained the con- 
 fidence of the working classes, whom they have 
 alienated almost beyond the possibility of rec- 
 onciliation by their uncompromismg reiteration 
 of the dogma of Laissez faire. 
 
 Our American economists have been the great- 
 est sinners in this respect. Even after Cairnes, 
 the ablest English economist who survived 
 Mill, had frankly confessed that since "human 
 beings know and follow their interests, accord- 
 ing to their lights and dispositions, but not 
 necessarily, nor in practice always, in that 
 sense in which the interest of the individual is 
 coincident with that of others or of the whole, 
 . . . there is no security that the economic 
 
 13 
 
194 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 phenomena of society, as at present constituted, 
 will arrange themselves spontaneously in the 
 way which is most for the common good ; " 
 and even after Jevons, the ablest English 
 economist who survived Cairnes, had declared, 
 in reference to this very subject, that it is 
 futile to attempt to uphold any theory of 
 eternal fixed principles or abstract rights re- 
 garding what is simply a question of proba- 
 bility and degree, — our American economists 
 have continued monotonously to repeat the 
 doctrine of the economic harmonies, as if it 
 contained the sum of all truth, and have dealt 
 with every one who presumed to seek to define 
 that part of the field of the general good which 
 fails to be covered by the operation of the prin- 
 ciple of self-interest, almost as an economic 
 outlaw. 
 
 I do not know that a better instance could 
 be given of the unfortunate efi'ects of the con- 
 troversial error (looking at it still from the 
 lowest point of view) which the economists 
 have committed in dealing with this question, 
 than by referring again, for a moment, to Mr. 
 George's work.^ 
 
 The keynote of that work is found in its 
 1 See ante, p. 141. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 195 
 
 title, "Progress and Poverty." The author, 
 with extraordinary rhetorical skill, grasps all 
 the facts which establish a seeming connection 
 between these two phenomena. To his own 
 satisfaction he finds that " where the conditions 
 to which material progress everywhere tends 
 are most fully realized, — that is to say, where 
 population is densest, wealth greatest, and the 
 machinery of production and exchange most 
 highly developed, — we find the deepest pov- 
 erty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and 
 the most enforced idleness. . . . The tramp 
 comes with the locomotive, and almshouses 
 and prisons are as surely the marks of mate- 
 rial progress as are costly dwellings, rich ware- 
 houses, and magnificent churches. Upon streets 
 lighted with gas and patrolled by uniformed 
 policemen, beggars wait for the passer-by ; and 
 in the shadow of college and library and 
 museum, are gathering the more hideous 
 Huns and fiercer Yandals of whom Macaulay 
 prophesied." 
 
 The cause of this close conjunction of Pov- 
 erty with Progress is the object of Mr. George's 
 research. Obvious, close at hand, is the influ- 
 ence of the modern organization of industry, — 
 the concentration of capitals, the speciaHzation 
 
196 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 of occupations, tlie localization of manufactures, 
 the intense and unremitting competition of 
 world-wide exchanges. 
 
 But the professional economists assure Mr. 
 George that it is not this cause which produces 
 the effect he seeks to explain ; that, through 
 economic harmonies, never to be sufficiently ad- 
 mired, the individual industrial agent is pro- 
 tected from all possibility of harm amid the 
 operation of these tremendous forces, and that 
 the laborer will surely recover, as consumer, 
 whatever he may lose as producer. 
 
 Shut off, then, by the economists themselves, 
 from finding here the cause of " the association 
 of Poverty with Progress," Mr. George turns to 
 rent as the source of the economic evils he 
 describes ; and it is difficult to see how he can 
 be answered by those who stand committed to 
 the dogma of the economic harmonies. He 
 has arrived at his demonstration through a 
 logical process of exclusion ; and it is the econ- 
 omists themselves who have thrown out, for 
 his behoof if not on his behalf, the only cause, 
 other than rent, which could reasonably be 
 adduced in explanation of the phenomenon. 
 
 To return from this long excursion, the prime 
 question regarding the land, which addresses it- 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 197 
 
 self alike to economist and to statesman, is this : 
 Shall land he regarded simply as an instrument 
 of production, as we have agreed to consider 
 the organized system of mechanical industry ? 
 Shall we say that it does not matter how much 
 those who actually work upon the soil may 
 lose, of individuality or independence, in their 
 economical position, since they will be sure, as 
 consumers, to make themselves good for any 
 disadvantage which they may immediately suf- 
 fer, as producers ? Shall we consent to trust to 
 competition alone to effect the distribution of 
 the produce of agricultural labor, as we have, 
 with whatever of misgiving or reserve, accepted 
 it as the agent for the distribution of the pro- 
 ducts of mechanical labor ? ^ Or must we take 
 some further bond for securing the interests of 
 the producer who works upon the land ? Or, 
 again, are there considerations addressing them- 
 selves to the economist or the statesman, which 
 claim priority to the questions relating either to 
 
 1 This view is expressed by Sir James Caird, in speaking 
 of English agi-iculture : " Our agriculture is no longer in- 
 fluenced hy considerations of the means of finding employment 
 for surplus labor, but is now being developed on the prin- 
 ciple of obtaining the largest produce at the least cost, — the 
 same principle by which the power-loom has supplanted the 
 hand-loom." 
 
198 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 the production or the distribution of wealth, — 
 considerations, for example, relating to the con- 
 sumption of wealth or to the relation of subsist- 
 ence to population, or considerations relating to 
 good citizenship and the security of the State ? 
 
 That great numbers of intelligent economists, 
 who willingly accept all the consequences of 
 competition acting upon the most extended sys- 
 tem of production in mechanical industry, either 
 hesitate or altogether refuse to regard land as 
 a mere instrument of production, is well known 
 to all students of economics. ISTor do these men 
 occupy an illogical position. 
 
 In the first place, looking to what are called 
 the rights of property, it is admitted by all 
 sound writers on public policy, that property 
 in land differs markedly and materially from 
 property in capital or in the products of labor. 
 If both species of property are "sacred," to 
 use a familiar phrase, landed property, by 
 almost universal consent, stands lower, much 
 lower, in the hierarchy than property in capi- 
 tal. It would be easy to quote from writers of 
 every school in support of this assertion, but 
 doubtless the statement of Professor Eoscher 
 will be accepted as a just summary of the views 
 of the body of publicists : — 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 199 
 
 " The appropriation of ' original and indestruc- 
 tible natural forces' lias its basis not so much 
 in justice as in the general good ; and the state 
 has always considered itself entitled to attach 
 to the ' monopoly of land ' which it accorded to 
 the first possessor all kinds of limitations and 
 conditions, in the interest of the common good, 
 and sometimes to consider private property in 
 land in the light of a semi-public function." ^ 
 
 If, therefore, the proprietor of land owns it 
 in a somewhat different and a somewhat lower 
 sense than that in which the proprietor of 
 chattels owns them, one class of valid objec- 
 tions to interference by authority with the use 
 of property in chattels may not apply with 
 equal force, or indeed may perhaps not apply 
 at all, to property in land. 
 
 This distinction is vigorously asserted by 
 Professor Cairnes, in his essay entitled ''Politi- 
 cal Economy and Land." 
 
 " Sustained," he says, "by some of the greatest 
 names, — I will say, by every name of the first 
 rank in Political Economy, from Turgot and 
 Adam Smith to Mill, — I hold that the land 
 of a country presents conditions which separate 
 it economically from the great mass of the other 
 
 1 See Mr. Mill's remark, ante, p. 124. 
 
200 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 objects of wealtli, — conditions which, if they 
 do not absolutely and under all circumstances 
 impose upon the state the obligation of con- 
 trolling private enterprise in dealing with land, 
 at least explain why this control is, in certain 
 stages of social progress, indispensable, and why, 
 in fact, it has been constantly put in force 
 whenever public opinion or custom^ has not 
 been strong enough to do without it. 
 
 "And not merely does economic science, as 
 expounded by its ablest teachers, dispose of cv 
 priori objections to a policy of intervention 
 with regard to land, it even furnishes princi- 
 ples fitted to inform and guide such a policy 
 in a positive sense. Far from being the irrec- 
 oncilable foe, it is the natural ally, of those 
 who engage in this course, at once justifying 
 the principle of their undertaking, and lending 
 itself as a minister to the elaboration of the 
 constructive design." 
 
 But, again, a wide difference in the degree 
 of advantage which may be expected to result 
 from the application of the subdivision of 
 labor and the aggregation of capitals in agri- 
 culture, as compared with manufactures, enters 
 
 1 On the power of public opinion or custom over rent, 
 see ante, pp. 47-51. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 201 
 
 to justify a very different view of tlie two 
 cases. 
 
 It would be wholly reasonable to admit that 
 the enormous gain in productive power which 
 results from the modern organization of me- 
 chanical labor must be accepted as outweighing 
 all the evils incidental to that system, while 
 denying emphatically that the productive power 
 of land in large estates under a single manage- 
 ment shows any such excess over the produc- 
 tive power of land when cut up into small farms 
 cultivated by their respective owners, as to 
 compensa.te for the disadvantages that might 
 be held to result from a less equable distribu- 
 tion of wealth, through the discouragement of 
 frugality, through a more wanton increase of 
 population, or through the merely political loss 
 resulting to the State from the destruction of 
 an independent and self-reliant yeomanry. 
 
 That the excess of advantages, productively 
 considered, upon the side of large estates, as 
 compared with what are usually called peasant 
 properties, cannot be very great, is shown by 
 the fact that the existence of such an excess in 
 any degree has been disputed by writers so in- 
 telligent and candid as Messrs. Mill, Thornton, 
 and Hippolyte Passy. 
 
202 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 Yet, for one, I am willing to accept tlie con- 
 clusion of Sir James Caird, as stated in the 
 following paragraphs : — 
 
 " A system is best tested by its fruits. Com- 
 pared with all other countries, our threefold 
 plan of landlord, farmer, and laborer, appears 
 to yield larger returns, with fewer laborers and 
 from an equal extent of land. 
 
 " Our average produce of wheat is 28 bushels 
 an acre, against 16 in France, 16 in Germany, 
 and 13 in Eussia and the United States.^ We 
 show a similar advantage in live-stock, both in 
 quantity and quality. We have far more horses, 
 cattle, and sheep in proportion to acreage than 
 any other country, and in all these kinds there 
 is a general superiority. Our most famous 
 breeders of live-stock are the tenant farmers. 
 The best examples of farming are found in the 
 same class. The improved breeds of cattle, the 
 Leicester and Southdown sheep, and the ex- 
 
 1 The reader will, of course, understand that these figures 
 do not represent the comparative fertility of the lands of the 
 several countries named, or the comparative profits of agri- 
 culture. The English product is obtained, as Sir James 
 Caird states in the sentences following, through the applica- 
 tion of more labor, the employment of more cattle (furnishing 
 both power and manure), and the use of more machinery, the 
 cost of all which has to come out of the value of the product. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 203 
 
 tended use of macliinery, manures, and artificial 
 foods are chiefly due to them. 
 
 ''And the neatness of the cultivation, the 
 straight furrow and the beautiful lines of drilled 
 corn, the well-built ricks and docile horses, ex- 
 hibit at once the strength and the skill of the 
 laborers. 
 
 " If that mode of husbandry which lessens the 
 exchangeable value of bread and meat by an 
 increase of production and supply, is the best 
 for the community, from whom a smaller propor- 
 tion of their labor is required for the purchase 
 of their food, then our system of subdivision of 
 labor by landlord, farmer, and laborer, the three 
 interests engaged in its production, will stand 
 a favorable comparison with that of any other 
 country." ^ 
 
 The reason why the division of labor and the 
 concentration of capital accomplish so much 
 less, relatively, in agriculture than in manu- 
 factures, is twofold. 
 
 On the one hand, the nature of agricultural 
 operations, the extent of the field over which 
 they are carried on, the varying necessities of 
 the seasons in their order, and the limited ap- 
 plicability of machinery and elemental power, 
 
 1 The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food, pp. 68-70. 
 
204 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 preclude tlie possibility of achieving a gain in 
 tills department of activity which shall be at 
 all comparable to that which is attained where 
 hundreds and thousands of workmen are gath- 
 ered upon a few acres of ground, where ma- 
 chinery the most delicate and the most powerful 
 may be applied successively to every minute 
 operation, and where the force of steam or grav- 
 ity may be invoked to multiply many fold the 
 efficiency of the unaided man. 
 
 On the other hand, there is a virtue in the 
 mere ownership of land by the actual laborer, 
 which goes far, very far, to outweigh the ad- 
 vantages which great capitals bring to the cul- 
 tivation of the soil. The " magic of property " 
 in transmuting the bleak rock into the bloom- 
 ing garden, the barren sand of the seashore 
 into the richest mould, has been told by a 
 hundred travellers and economists since Arthur 
 Young's day. In his tireless activity, "from 
 the rising of the lark to the lodging of the 
 lamb ; " in his unceasing vigilance against every 
 form of waste ; in his sympathetic care of the 
 drooping vine, the broken bough, the tender 
 young of the flock and the herd; in his inti- 
 mate knowledge of the character and capabili- 
 ties of every field, and of every corner of every 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 205 
 
 field, within his narrow domain ; in his passion- 
 ate devotion to the land which is all his own, 
 which was his father's before him, which will 
 be his son's after him, the peasant, the small 
 proprietor, holds the secret of an economic vir- 
 tue which even the power of machinery can 
 scarcely overcome. 
 
 Americans are perhaps likely to overrate the 
 degree in which operations on a vast scale, un- 
 der a single management, may be advanta- 
 geously carried on. The stories of the great 
 farms of Illinois and California, and, even more 
 prodigious, of the Dalrymple farms along 
 the line of the Northern Pacific Eailroad, are 
 likely to create the impression on the mind 
 of the reader that there is almost no limit to 
 the success of great, even of gigantic, agricul- 
 ture. 
 
 Such cases, are, however, highly exceptional, 
 even in the cultivation of the staple cereal 
 crops and of cotton ; while, as we reach the 
 numberless minor crops, which in their aggre- 
 gate constitute a large part of the agriculture 
 of the world, the advantages of aggregated 
 capitals diminish rapidly or disappear alto- 
 gether. 
 
 On this point M. Leroy-Beaulieu remarks : — 
 
206 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 "The more agriculture develops, the more 
 the exceptional advantage of great operations 
 diminishes. When we have only to do with 
 simple processes, like gathering the wild fruits 
 of the earth, burning or cutting trees and brush 
 to clear the soil, opening the land with im- 
 proved ploughs, harvesting with machines 
 which in a high degree economize hand-labor ; 
 or when, indeed, it is merely necessary to fence 
 in large tracts, leaving the flocks to roam there 
 untended, care alone being taken that they 
 do not stray and that the animals are duly 
 sheared or slaughtered, — under these circum- 
 stances large capitals have doubtless a signal 
 advantage. The principle of combination, by 
 avoiding the dissipation of human energy, gives 
 much greater results than a multitude of sepa- 
 rate and independent efforts. 
 
 "But these conditions are met only in an 
 early stage. They soon disappear. There are 
 scarcely more than two agricultural products 
 which succeed very well in large operations, — 
 the cereals and the raising of cattle.^ It is 
 
 1 M. Leroy-Bcaulieu might perhaps have added cotton ; 
 yet the results of Mr, Edward Atkinson's investigations 
 strongly tend to prove that, with free labor, small cotton 
 plantations have an actual advantage. 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 207 
 
 said, these are the principal products ; but even 
 with these the small and medium can very 
 easily hold their own against the great culture, 
 when once the period of clearing and peopling 
 the ground has passed, while, on the contrary, 
 the great culture, at least the giant culture, 
 can hardly hold its own against the small, as 
 respects all the accessory products of agricul- 
 ture, the importance of which is continually 
 on the increase. The finer products, with- 
 out exception, — vegetables, fruits, wine, poul- 
 try, butter, cheese, — are better suited to small 
 or medium than to large operations. The im- 
 portance of the eye of the master upon all 
 the details of production becomes much greater 
 as the cultivatmg of the soil becomes more 
 intensive and more varied." 
 
 Thirdly, in addition to the question of gross 
 production, we have considerations relating to 
 the distribution of the produce, which may 
 properly enter to affect the mind of the econ- 
 omist or the statesman when dealing with the 
 tenure of the soil. 
 
 That the industrial position of the individual 
 agent, — as, for instance, whether producing in 
 his own right and name, by permission of no 
 one, a merchantable product, regarding which 
 
208 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 he lias only to take the risks of a fortunate or 
 unfortunate exchange, or, in the opposite case, 
 as a candidate for employment at the hands of 
 another, through whose consent only can he ob- 
 tain the opportunity to take a part in produc- 
 tion, and with whom, consequently, he has to 
 make terms in advance of production and as a 
 condition precedent to production, — that the 
 industrial position of the individual agent may 
 powerfully affect the distribution of the produce 
 among those who take part in production ; that 
 the injuries suffered in that distribution by the 
 economically weak should result, more or less 
 extensively, in permanent industrial disability, 
 through loss of health and strength, through 
 loss of constitutional energy or corruption of 
 the blood, through loss of self-respect and social 
 ambition, such disability being as real and as 
 lasting as the disabilities incurred in a railway 
 accident, the laborer, in consequence thereof, 
 sinking to a lower industrial grade, beyond the 
 reach of any reparative or restorative forces of 
 a purely economical origin ; and, lastly, that in 
 the reaction of distribution upon production, 
 the whole community and all classes should 
 suffer, both economically and socially ; — how 
 any one can deny these things, I cannot con- 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 209 
 
 ceive, although it has mysteriously pleased the 
 economists almost wholly to omit considera- 
 tion of causes of this nature. 
 
 That the system of small holdings reduces to 
 a minimum the difficulties and the economic 
 dangers attending the distribution of wealth, 
 is implied in the very statement of the case. 
 The great majority of those who work upon the 
 land being self-employed, and the produce being 
 their own, without deduction, the question 
 what they shall receive as the fruit of their 
 labor becomes a question of their own indus- 
 try and prudence, subject alone to the kindness 
 or unkindness of nature in giving the sunshine 
 and the rain in their due season and measure, 
 or the reverse. 
 
 The reduction of the mass of those who work 
 upon the land to the condition of hired labor- 
 ers brings upon each the necessity of finding a 
 master with whom he must make terms prece- 
 dent to production ; of entering into a compe- 
 tition at once with his fellows as to priority of 
 employment, and with the members of the em- 
 ploying class as to rates of wages and forms of 
 payment, for which competition he may be more 
 or less disqualified by poverty, ignorance, and 
 mental inertia, by distrust of himself or by 
 14 
 
210 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 jealousy of others. The condition of the agri- 
 cultural laborers of England during the past 
 hundred years shows that the evils portrayed 
 are not merely imaginary. 
 
 Fourthly, even more important than the con- 
 siderations relating to the production and the 
 distribution of wealth, bearing upon the tenure 
 of land, which have been indicated, are certain 
 considerations connected with the Consumption 
 of Wealth. 
 
 Under which system of holdings are the 
 forces which determine the uses to be made 
 of wealth likely to be most favorable to the 
 strength and prosperity of the community? 
 
 That the ownership of land, in the main, by 
 the cultivating class, promotes frugality and a 
 wiser application of the existing body of wealth, 
 is too manifest to require discussion. The true 
 savings-bank, says Sismondi, is the soil. There 
 is never a time when the owner of land is not 
 painfully conscious of improvements which he 
 desires to make upon his farm, of additions 
 which he desires to make to his stock. For 
 every shilling of money, as for every hour of 
 time, he knows an immediate use. He has 
 not to carry his earnings past a drinking-saloon 
 to find an opportunity to invest them. The 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 211 
 
 hungry land is, even at the moment, crying 
 aloud for them. 
 
 " Day-laborers," says Mr. Mill, " where the 
 laboring class mainly consists of them, are usu- 
 ally improvident ; they spend carelessly to the 
 full extent of their means, and let the future 
 shift for itself. 
 
 "This is so notorious that many persons, 
 otherwise well affected to the labormg classes, 
 hold it as a fixed opinion that an increase of 
 wages would do them little good, unless accom- 
 panied by at least a corresponding improvement 
 in their tastes and habits. The tendency of 
 peasant proprietors, and of those who hope to 
 become proprietors, is to the contrary extreme, 
 — to take even too much thought for the mor- 
 row. They are oftener accused of penuriousness 
 than of prodigality. They deny themselves 
 reasonable indulgences, and live wretchedly, 
 in order to economize. 
 
 " In Switzerland almost everybody saves, who 
 has any means of saving ; among the French, 
 though a pleasure-loving and reputed to be a 
 self-indulgent people, the spirit of thrift is dif- 
 fused through the rural population in a manner 
 most gratifying as a whole, and which in in- 
 dividual instances errs rather on the side of 
 excess than defect. .... 
 
212 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 " But some excess in this direction is a small 
 and passing evil compared with recklessness 
 and improvidence in the laboring classes, and a 
 cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of 
 the virtue of self-dependence, as the general 
 characteristic of a people, — a virtue which is 
 one of the first conditions of excellence in a hu- 
 man character ; the stock on which, if the other 
 virtues are not grafted, they have seldom any 
 firm root ; a quality indispensable in the case of 
 a laboring class, even to any tolerable degree of 
 physical comfort, and by which the peasantry 
 of France and of most European countries of 
 peasant proprietors are distinguished beyond 
 any other laboring population." 
 
 Fifthly, the influence upon population of a 
 widely popular tenure of the soil was once mat- 
 ter of dispute ; but the entire effect of European 
 experience during the past generation has been 
 to corroborate the view that no other state of 
 agricultural economy tends, on the whole, so 
 much to discourage an improvident increase of 
 numbers. 
 
 The reasons herefor cannot be better stated 
 than they have been by M. Sismondi : — 
 
 " In the countries in which cultivation by 
 small proprietors still continues, population 
 
THE BEST HOLDIXG OF THE LAND. 213 
 
 increases regularly and rapidly, until it has at- 
 tained its natural limits ; tliat is to say, inheri- 
 tances continue to be divided and subdivided 
 among several sons as long as, by an increase of 
 labor, each family can extract an equal income 
 from a smaller portion of land.^ A father who 
 possessed a vast extent of natural pasture divides 
 it among his sons, and they turn it mto fields 
 and meadows ; his sons divide it among their 
 sons, who abolish fallows ; each improvement 
 in agricultural knowledge admits of another 
 step in the subdivision of property. 
 
 " But there is no danger that the proprietor 
 will bring up children to make beggars of 
 them. He knows exactly what inheritance he 
 has to leave them ; he knows that the law ^ will 
 divide it equally among them; he sees the 
 limits beyond which partition would make 
 them descend from the rank which he himself 
 has filled ; and a just family pride, common to 
 the peasant and the prmce, makes hhn abstain 
 from summoning into life children for whom 
 he cannot properly provide. If more are born, 
 
 1 See ante, pp. 13-16. 
 
 2 This has reference to the principle of "Partible Suc- 
 cession," widely incorporated into the law of Continental 
 Europe. 
 
214 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 at least they do not marry, or they agree among 
 themselves which of several brothers shall per- 
 petuate the family." 
 
 The power of population strictly to limit 
 itself, under the impulse to preserve family 
 estates from undue subdivision, by the means 
 adverted to in the closing sentence of the 
 paragraph quoted, is strikingly illustrated by 
 Professor Cliffe Leslie, in the facts which 
 he adduces regarding the population of Au- 
 vergne. 
 
 In the mountains, it appears, the people cling 
 with remarkable tenacity to the conservation 
 of the inheritance unbroken. The daughters 
 willingly consent to take vows and renounce the 
 patrimony of their parents; or, if they con- 
 tract marriage, agree to leave to the head of 
 the family their individual shares of the inheri- 
 tance. It is the same with the sons, of whom 
 some become priests ; others emigrate, consent- 
 ing never to claim any part of the property. 
 One of the sons remains at home, working with 
 the father and mother, and becomes in time 
 the proprietor of the ancestral estate. Thus the 
 principle of equal partition, established by law, 
 is eluded by the connivance of the family, it 
 seldom occurring that the other children assert 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 215 
 
 their claims, so fullj accepted is this usage in 
 the manners of the mountains. 
 
 Professor Leslie, after giving the foregoing as 
 the substance of an official report, adds : " The 
 renunciation by the emigrants of their share in 
 the family property certainly shows, if not an 
 extraordinary imperviousness to new ideas, an 
 extraordinary tenacity of old ones ; and, in par- 
 ticular, of two ideas which are among the old- 
 est in human society, — subordination to the 
 male head of the family, and conservation of 
 the family property unbroken." 
 
 From the '' London Times," ^ I take the fol- 
 lowing remarkable testimony to the influence 
 of an extensive ownership of land in antago- 
 nizing the procreative force, and in winning for 
 improved living, comfort, luxury, and security 
 of condition, what otherwise would be usurped 
 and wasted upon increase of population, with 
 resulting squalor and poverty : — 
 
 " Over the greater part of France the standard 
 of comfort and well-being has been increasing 
 ever since the termination of the great war in 
 1815. The country had been so drained and 
 impoverished by the great wars of Napoleon 
 and by a century and a half of bad government, 
 1 January 25, 1883. 
 
216 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 that the general misery of the population was 
 indescribable, and the poverty even of the 
 landed proprietors and middle classes was very 
 great. . . . For many years comfort and well- 
 being, and even luxury, have made their way 
 into the households of all classes in France. The 
 standard of living has risen enormously. The 
 habits of saving and thrift have not been neg- 
 lected. In the art of managing and regularizing 
 their lives, the French people are unrivalled, and 
 the object of every family is to live and to save, 
 at the same time, so as to be able to leave 
 their sons and daughters in as good a position as 
 themselves, at all events, and in a better, if 
 possible. . . . 
 
 " Among people with such habits and such 
 views of life, the risk and expenditure attend- 
 ant upon a large family are naturally regarded 
 with horror. ' Since two or three children give 
 us sufficient enjoyment of the pleasures of 
 paternity, why,' the greater number of French- 
 men argue, ' should we have more ? With two 
 or three children, we can live comfortably, and 
 save sufficient to leave our children as well 
 off as ourselves; a greater number would in- 
 volve curtailment of enjoyments both for our- 
 selves and our children/ " 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 217 
 
 "VVitliout confining myself at all points within 
 strictly economic lines of thought, I have 
 grouped the considerations which lead me to 
 dissent from the opinion of M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
 that if the economic interest which demands the 
 greatest possible production of wealth be found 
 irreconcilable with the moral interest which 
 claims that the greatest number of persons 
 shall be proprietors of land, it is the former 
 which should by all means prevail, the latter 
 which should in all cases give way. 
 
 Beyond the considerations which I have felt 
 at liberty to adduce, is the interest of the com- 
 munity in the development of the manhood 
 of its citizens, through the individuality and 
 independence of character which spring from 
 working upon the soil that you own. 
 
 "I believe," wrote Emerson,^ "in the spade 
 and an acre of good ground. Whoso cuts a 
 straight path to his own bread, by the help of 
 God in the sun and rain and sprouting of the 
 grain, seems to me an universal workman. He 
 solves the problem of life, not for one, but 
 for all men of sound body." 
 
 Still, in addition to this, is the political in- 
 terest which the State has, that as many as may 
 
 1 To Carlyle, March 18, 1840. 
 
218 LAND AND ITS EENT. 
 
 be of its citizens shall be directly interested in 
 the land. Especially with popular institutions is 
 there a strong assurance of peace, order, purity, 
 and liberty, where those who are to make the 
 laws, to pay the taxes, to rally to the support of 
 the Government against foreign invasion or do- 
 mestic violence, are the proprietors of the soil. 
 
 I would by no means argue in favor of a 
 dull uniformity of petty holdings. Probably 
 Professor Eoscher is right in saying that a 
 mingling of large, medium, and small proper- 
 ties, in which those of medium size predomi- 
 nate, forms the most wholesome of national 
 and economical organizations. 
 
 In such an organization each class of estates 
 is a help and strength to every other. The 
 great estates afford adequate field and ample 
 capital for advanced experimental agriculture, 
 by the results of which all will, in turn, profit. 
 They set the standard of " the straight furrow, 
 the well-built ricks, and the beautiful lines of 
 drilled corn," to use the enthusiastic phrase 
 of Sir James Caird. 
 
 The multitude of small proprietors, on the 
 other hand, as Professor Emile de Lave! eye has 
 well expressed it, serve as a kind of political 
 rampart and safeguard for the holders of large 
 
THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 219 
 
 estates ; tliey offer the laborer a ready resort to 
 the land, a sort of economical " escape/' in the 
 failure of mechanical employment; and they 
 provide the nation with a solid body of yeo- 
 men, not easily bought or bullied or cajoled by 
 demagogues. 
 
 In the medium-sized farms, again, may be 
 found united no small measure of the advan- 
 tages of both the large estate and the petty 
 holding, the three degrees together forming the 
 ideal distribution of the soil of any country, 
 where both economical and social considera- 
 tions are taken into account. 
 
 What, if anything, should be done by the 
 State to promote the right holding of land ? 
 Mr. Thornton's reply to this question is the 
 reply of Diogenes to Alexander : " Get out of 
 my light ! " And, indeed, in a country like our 
 own, with vast unoccupied tracts still available 
 for settlement, with a population active, alert, 
 aggressive, both industrially and socially, and 
 with no vicious traditions, no old abuses, per- 
 verting the natural operation of economic forces 
 to ends injurious to the general interest, it is 
 only needful that the State should keep off its 
 hand, and allow the soil to be parted as the 
 
220 LAND AND ITS RENT. 
 
 unhelped and unMndered course of sale and 
 bequest may determine. But wherever there 
 is a peasantry unfitted for competition, upon 
 purely commercial principles, with a powerful 
 and wealthy class, under a painful pressure of 
 population, there the regulation of the holding 
 of land becomes a proper matter of State 
 concern. 
 
 <x 
 
INDEX 
 
 AGEICULTURE, always subject to the law of diminishing re- 
 turns, 13-16 ; the characteristic agriculture of the United 
 States, 45-47; agriculture of England compared with 
 that of other countries, 202 ; agriculture contrasted with 
 manufactures, as to the effects of an extensive applica- 
 tion of the principle of division of labor, 197-207. 
 
 ALISON, SIR A., offers an illustration of the force of geo- 
 metrical progression, 83. 
 
 AMERICAN COMPETITION, its influence on European 
 rents, 25, 26, 115-117 ; characteristic American agricul- 
 ture, 45-47, 202. 
 
 ANDERSEN, JAMES, stated the true law of rent in 1777, 
 32. 
 
 ATKINSON, EDWARD, small plantations and the cotton 
 culture, 206 n. 
 
 AUYERGNE, influence of personal proprietorship in that re- 
 gion upon marriage and the increase of population, 21 4, 
 215. 
 
 BASTIAT, FRIEDIERIC, his attack upon the economic 
 
 doctrine of rent, 57-75. 
 BELGIUM, « rack rents " in, 44. 
 
222 INDEX. 
 
 CAIRD, SIR JAMES, range of productiveness among pas- 
 ture-lands, 11 ; position of the English, land-owners, 
 how affected by recent improvements in transportation, 
 115-117 ; improvement in the condition of the British 
 laborer, 168 ; advantages of large as contrasted with 
 small farms, 202, 203. 
 CAIRNES, PROFo J. E., effect of land monopoly upon 
 rents, 41, 42 ; his criticism of Bastiat's word " services," 
 59 n.; the operation of self-interest not always com- 
 patible with the general good, 193, 104 ; the ownership 
 of land rightfully subject to State regulation, 199, 200. 
 CALIFORNIA, the speculative holding of its land, 1868-73, 
 
 163, 164. 
 CAPITAL, invested in the soil, how compensated, 32-37, 
 82-85 ; the law of capital contrasted with the law of 
 rent, 33-35 ; Mr. George's disparaging view of the im- 
 portance of capital in production, 144 ; his view that 
 none of the gain due to increase of productive power 
 is received by capital, in enhanced interest, 145-188. 
 CAREY, HENRY C, his attack upon the economic doc- 
 trine of rent, 75 ; his first argument, derived from " the 
 cost of producing farms," 75-88 ; his second argument, 
 derived from the historical order of the occupation and 
 cultivation of the soil, 88-108. 
 CATTLE, cost of transportation from America to Europe, 
 
 115, 116. 
 CHUZZLEWIT, MARTIN", his lamentable experiences in 
 the town of Eden used in argument against the doc- 
 trine of Ricardo, 118. 
 COMBINATIONS to exact rents in excess of the Ricardian 
 
 formula, 38-42. 
 COMMUNITIES, CULTIVATING (Tillage), originally the 
 proprietors of the soil, 128, 129 ; their efliciency as cul- 
 tivators, 137,^138. 
 
INDEX. 223 
 
 COMPENSATION", claim of land-owners to, should their 
 estates be taken by the State, admitted by Mr. Mill, 
 124, 126, 127 ; denied by Mr. George, 161. 
 
 COMPETITION, implied in the economic doctrine of rent, 
 12, 38-53 ; effects of unequal competition in mechani- 
 cal industry, 183-194 ; in agriculture, 219, 220. 
 
 COMPOUND INTEREST, how far it may safely be intro- 
 duced into economic computations, 83, 84. 
 
 CONFISCATION OF RENT, proposed by Mr. Mill, saving 
 the rights of existing holders, 124-127 ; by Mr. George, 
 without saving such rights, 161. 
 
 CONSUMERS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE, not con- 
 cerned in the payment of rent, 27-31 ; how far may 
 agricultural laborers, as consumers of agricultural pro- 
 duce, recover whatever of advantage they may lose 
 through the sacrifice of their independent position as 
 producers ? 197, 198. 
 
 CONSUMPTION OF WEALTH, how influenced by the 
 tenure of the soil, 210, 211. 
 
 COST OF "PRODUCING FARMS," used by M. Bastiat 
 as an argument against the economic doctrine of rent, 
 67, 68 ; this argument also used by Mr. Carey, 76 ; the 
 argument examined, 77-88 ; the same argument used 
 by M. Leroy-Beaulieu, 111, 112. 
 
 CRISES, COMMERCIAL, attributed by Mr. George to the 
 private ownership of land, 156-158. 
 
 CUSTOM, as influencing rents, 49, 50. 
 
 DEPRECIATION OF PROPERTY, as complicating the 
 problem of nationalizing the land, 134-136. 
 
 DIMINISHING RETURNS IN AGRICULTURE, expla- 
 nation of the term, 13-16 ; scope of the principle, 
 16-21. 
 
224 . INDEX. 
 
 DISTRIBUTIOjS' of wealth, importance of rent in the, 
 109-120 ; influence of the tenure of the soil upon that 
 distribution, 201, 207-210. 
 
 DIVISION OF LABOR, as increasing production, 13-15 ; 
 mechanical, contrasted with agricultural, industry, in 
 this respect, 184-190, 197-207 ; its effect upon the dis- 
 tribution and consumption of wealth and upon popula- 
 tion, 185-189, 194-196, 207-219. 
 
 EMERSOIT, R. W., on the virtue there is in the cultivation 
 of the soil, 217. 
 
 ENGLAIjTD, competitive rents not always exacted, 48, 49 ; 
 rents how aff'ected by modern facilities of transporta- 
 tion, 115-117 ; productiveness of its agriculture com- 
 pared with that of other countries, 202. 
 
 EUROPE, CONTINENTAL, competitive rents not the 
 rule, 49. 
 
 FACTORY ACTS justified by economic principles, 190, 191. 
 
 FERTILITY, diff'erences in, as governing rent, 10-11, 13- 
 21 ; as governing settlement and cultivation, 89-108. 
 
 FISCAL INUTILITY of public lands, 136, 137, 140, 141. 
 
 FRANCE, productiveness of its agriculture compared with 
 that of England, 202 ; frugality of its peox^le, 210 ; re- 
 straint of population, 214-216. 
 
 FRUGALITY, how influenced by peasant proprietorship, 
 210-212. 
 
 GEOMETRICAL PROGRESSION, how far may this prin- 
 ciple be introduced into economic computations, 83, 84. 
 
 GEORGE, HENRY, his work, " Progress and Poverty," the 
 interest aroused by it in England, 6-9 ; his economic 
 position reviewed, 141-181 ; his economic errors how 
 
INDEX. 225 
 
 far explained "by the errors of tlie current political econ- 
 omy, respecting the coincidence of individual interest 
 with the general good, 194-196. 
 
 GOVEENMENT, as the proprietor of land, may, by estab- 
 lishing a land monopoly, exact a rent in excess of the 
 Eicardian formula, 41, 42 ; Mr. Mill and Mr. George 
 propose that Government shall assume the ownership 
 of the soil, chap. iii. 
 
 GEAIN, cost of transportation from America to England, 116. 
 
 IMPEOYEMEN'TS AISTD INVENTION'S, Mr. George's view 
 of their relation to rent, 151-153 ; this view examined, 
 162-181 ; Mr. Mill's statement of the effect of strictly 
 agricultural improvements upon rent, 177-181. 
 
 IMPEOVEMENTS OF THE SOIL, how compensated, 32- 
 37, 82-85. 
 
 INFEEIOE SOILS, are they settled first ? 89-108. 
 
 INTEEEST ON LANDED IMPEOVEMENTS, how related 
 to rent, 32-37, 76-88, 111, 112 ; Mr. George's view 
 that none of the gain accruing from improvements, in 
 production or exchange, goes to the capitalist in en- 
 hanced interest, but that this gain is wholly absorbed 
 by rent, 145-188. 
 
 INTEEEST, COMPOUND. See Compound Interest. 
 
 INTEEEST, SELF. See Sele-Interest. 
 
 INVENTIONS AND IMPEOVEMENTS. See Improve- 
 ments, etc. 
 
 lEELAND, rents there approach and even exceed the eco- 
 nomic maximum, 43, 60, 51. 
 
 JEVONS, PEOF. W. STANLEY, his proposition that "the 
 wages of a laboring man are ultimately coincident with 
 15 
 
226 INDEX. 
 
 what he produces, after the deduction of rent, taxes, 
 and the interest of capital," 144, 145 ; the operation of 
 individual interest is not always consistent with the gen- 
 eral good, 194. 
 JOHNSTON, PEOF. J. F. W., his notes on North America, 
 46 n. ; " rich land for a rich man may be poor land for 
 a poor man," 101. 
 
 KEELEY MOTOR, its success all that is lacking to effect a 
 complete refutation of Ricardo's doctrine, 120. 
 
 LABOR vs. LAND, Mr. George's view that all labor-saving 
 improvements and machinery expend their entire force 
 in enhancing the demand for land, and thus increase 
 rents while wages do not advance, 154, 155 ; this view 
 examined, 167-181. 
 
 LABORER, THE AGRICULTURAL, not concerned in the 
 payment of rent, 27-31. 
 
 LAND, of varying degrees of fertility, 10, 11, 21 ; the no- 
 rent lands, 11, 12, 24, 29, 33, 34, 52, 53, 73-75 ; the 
 question of individual or common ownership, chap. iii. ; 
 the best holding of the land, chap, iv. 
 
 LAVELEYE, PROF. :&MILE DE, rack rents in Belgium, 
 44 ; his view of the Cultivating Communities of the 
 Middle Ages, 137 ; he declares that the increase of cap- 
 ital is greater than that of ground rents, 168, 169. 
 
 LEROY-BEAULIEU, PAUL, his attack upon the economic 
 doctrine of rent, 109-120; estimates the comparative 
 advantages of large and of small farms, 205-207. 
 
 LESLIE, PROF. CLIFFE, the influence of small holdings 
 upon population, 214, 215. 
 
INDEX. 227 
 
 MAINE, SIE HEITEY, competitive rents a thing of 
 recent origin, 50 n. ; rack rent, 51 n. ; inefficiency of 
 communal cultivation, 138. 
 
 MALTHUS, T. R., Ms statement of the law of rent, 32 ; 
 relation of his law of population to the economic doc- 
 trine of rent, 93, 94 ; Mr. George attacks his law of 
 population, 145, 150. 
 
 MARGIN OF CULTIVATION, so-called, as controlling 
 rents, 24, 25, 53-55, 92, 95, 96 ; Mr. George's distinc- 
 tion between the necessary and the actual margin, 
 155, 156. 
 
 MARRIAGE, how influenced by peasant proprietorship, 
 212-216. 
 
 McCULLOCH, J. R., the range of productiveness among 
 cultivated lands, 11. 
 
 MILL, JOHN STUART, the means by which the produce 
 of any given tract may be increased, 15 n. ; his plan 
 for nationalizing the soil, and securing to the State 
 the progressive increment in its value, 121-130 ; its 
 feasibility considered, 130-141 ; his statement of the 
 effect of agricultural improvements upon rent, 177- 
 181 ; the influence of peasant prox^rietorship upon 
 frugality, 211, 212. 
 
 MINIMUM, THE ECONOMIC, to be treated as nil, 12. 
 
 MOBILITY OF LABOR, as related to rent, 43-51. 
 
 MONOPOLY OF LAND, how it may be established, and 
 its effects on rent, 38-42. 
 
 NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE SOIL, these 
 alone, and not improvements effected by capital and 
 labor, command rent, in the proper sense of the 
 term, 32-37, cf. 109. 
 
228 INDEX. 
 
 NATURAL RIGHTS, as concerned with the private hold- 
 ing of land, 141, 142. 
 
 NEWMARCH, WILLIAM, the diflaculty of classifying 
 landed improvements, 133 w. 
 
 NO-RENT LANDS, 11, 12, 24, 29, 33, 34, 52, 53, 73-75. 
 
 OHIO, THE STATE OF, in what order were its lands 
 
 occupied ? 98-106. 
 OPINION, PUBLIC, as influencing rents, 49, 50. 
 
 PANICS, attributed by Mr. George to the private ownership 
 of land, 155, 156. 
 
 PARTIBLE SUCCESSION, the law of, 213. 
 
 PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP, its advantages and dis- 
 advantages, 201-219. 
 
 PELL, ALFRED, the cost of transporting live cattle from 
 America to Europe, 115 ii. 
 
 POPULATION, how related to rent, 12-21, 93-96 ; Mr. 
 George's view, that land, being held as private prop- 
 erty, would produce in a stationary population all the 
 effects attributed by the Malthusian doctrine to pres- 
 sure of population, 150 ; how related to the tenure of 
 the soil, 212-216. 
 
 PRICE, NORMAL, how determined, 27, 28. 
 
 PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND, involved in the 
 economic doctrine of rent, 38-42 ; a comparatively 
 modern institution, 128, 129 ; its rightfulness and expe- 
 diency denied by Mr. Mill, 121-141 ; by Mr. George, 
 141-181 ; admitted by Professors Roscher and Cairnes 
 to-be only justified by public policy, 198-200. 
 
 PRODUCTION OF WEALTH, how influenced by the 
 tenure of the soil, 200-207. 
 
INDEX. 229 
 
 PKOFITS, Mr. George's proposition that none of the gain 
 accruing from improvements in production or exchange 
 goes to the employer of labor, in enhanced profits, that 
 gain being wholly absorbed by rent, 145-188. 
 
 PKOGRESS, so-called, indissolubly associated, in Mr. 
 George's theory, with poverty, 151, 152, 159, 160, 194- 
 196 ; the socialist and the protectionist view of the 
 same subject, 188-190. 
 
 " PROGRESS AITD POVERTY," Mr. George's work under 
 this title, 6-9, 141-181. 
 
 PROPERTY, WHY AND HOW FAR "SACRED"? Mr. 
 Mill's view, 122-127 ; Mr. George's view, 149-161 ; Pro- 
 fessor Cairnes' and Professor Roscher's view, 198-200. 
 
 PROTECTION", a means of limiting the extension of the 
 division of labor, 189, 190. 
 
 PROTECTIONISTS, their view of the influence of the 
 aggregation of capital and the subdivision of labor, 
 upon the condition of society, 189, 190. 
 
 QUARTERLY REVIEW, LONDON, references to Mr. 
 George's "Progress and Poverty," 7, 8. 
 
 RENT, its importance in the distribution of Avealth, the 
 subject of active discussion at the present time, 5, 6, 
 55, 56, 145, 188 ; origin and progress of rent illus- 
 trated, 9-21 ; the economic law of rent, 21 ; qualifica- 
 tions of this doctrine, 21-26 ; rent does not form a 
 part of the price of agricultural produce, nor is it de- 
 ducted from wages, 26-31 ; the economic doctrine of 
 rent relates only to compensation for the natural ad- 
 vantages of the soil, 32-35 ; distinction between rent 
 proper and interest on landed improvements, 35-37 ; 
 the assumptions which underlie the economic doctrine of 
 
230 INDEX. 
 
 rent, 38-53 ; rents governed by tlie margin of culti- 
 vation, 53-55, 95, 96 ; attacks on the economic doc- 
 trine of rent, chap. ii. ; Mr. Mill's and Mr. George's 
 proposals to confiscate rent by taxation, chap. iii. ; 
 Mr. George's proposition that all the gain accruing 
 from improvements in production or exchange go to 
 enhance rents, neither interest nor wages being ad- 
 vanced in consequence, 145-181. 
 
 EICAEDO, DAYID, why rent is paid, 29 n., 53; his 
 relation to the economic doctrine of rent, 31, 32 ; are 
 there any no-rent lands ? 7d n. ; his view of the his- 
 torical order of settlement, as between good and in- 
 ferior soils, 91, 92 ; what Mr. Eicardo would be likely 
 to think about rent now, 119, 120. 
 
 EIGHTS OF MAN, Mr. George's view concerning, 141, 142. 
 
 EOGEES, PEOF. J. E. THOEOLD, rents in England, 
 below the economic maximum, 48. 
 
 EOSCHEE, PEOF. WILLIAM., his view of Mr. Carey's 
 historical order of settlement, 90 ; private property in 
 land only to be justified by public policy, 198, 199 ; his 
 view of the best holding of the land, 218. 
 
 SANITAEY EEGULATIONS justified by economic prin- 
 
 ciples, 190, 191. 
 SELF-INTEEEST, its normal operation among owners of 
 
 land, 12, 21, 48, 50, 51, 91, 92 ; how far the operation of 
 
 self-interest is coincident with the general good, 191-194. 
 SENTIMENTS, MOEAL, as influencing rents, 47-51. 
 SEEVICES, the equivocal character of this word, as used 
 
 by Bastiat, 59-64. 
 SETTLEMENT OF LAND, Mr. Carey's alleged historical 
 
 order, and the argument derived therefrom against the 
 
 economic doctrine of rent, 89-108. 
 
INDEX. 231 
 
 SISMOITDI, M., influence of peasant proprietorship upon 
 frugality, 210 ; upon restraint of population, 212, 214. 
 
 SMITH, ADAM, his error in supposing that rent enters 
 into the price of agricultural produce, 27 n. ; are there 
 any no-rent lands ? 73 n. 
 
 SOCIALISTS, their view of the influence of the aggregation 
 of capital and the subdivision of labor upon the 
 condition of society, 188. 
 
 SOCIAL LABOE, how far the cause of rent, 68, 124-126. 
 
 SPECULATION IN LAND, Mr. George attributes to it 
 great industrial evils, 155-158 ; this view examined, 
 162-166. 
 
 STATE, the, Mr. Mill and Mr. George propose that the 
 State shall become the owner of the soil, chap. iii. ; 
 what shall the State do to prevent the evils likely to 
 attend the wide extension of the principle of the divi- 
 sion of labor ? 188-191, 219, 220. 
 
 SUPEEIOR SOILS, are they settled after inferior soils ? 
 89-108. 
 
 SURFACE, REGULARITY OF, its relation to rent, 22. 
 
 TAXATION OF RENT, SPECIAL, proposed by Mr. Mill, 
 124-127 ; by Mr. George, 160. 
 
 TENANT, the, rent a question between him and the land- 
 lord only, 27-31. 
 
 TENANTS making improvements on leased land, 84, 85. 
 
 TENURE OF THE LAND, THE BEST, chap. iv. 
 
 TIMES, THE LONDON, quoted concerning the advance 
 in the condition of the French people, 215, 216. 
 
 TRANSPORTATION, its relation to rent, 22-26; M. 
 Leroy-Beaulieu's view of recent and prospective reduc- 
 tions in its cost, 113-120 ; effect of improvements in 
 transportation upon rents, 176, 177. 
 
232 INDEX. 
 
 UlTEAENED mCREMET^T OF LAND, Mr. Mill's 
 statement of its origin, 121-128. 
 
 UNEXHAUSTED IMPROVEMENTS, tlieir relation to 
 rent, 51-53, 76-88. 
 
 UNITED STATES, influence of our competition upon 
 English rents, 25, 26, 115-117 ; rents here approach 
 the economic maximum, 44-48 ; the characteristics of 
 our agriculture, 45-47 ; in what order were our lands 
 settled, as between good and inferior soils ? 98-108 ; 
 productiveness of our agriculture, compared with that 
 of England, 202. 
 
 VALUE, M. Bastiat attributes all value to "service," 
 
 58-65. 
 VILLAGE COMMUNITIES, their cultivation of the soil, 
 
 128, 137, 138. 
 
 WAGES, not reduced by the payment of rent, 29, 30 ; 
 are they "produced by the labor for which they are 
 paid"? 143-145; Mr. George's proposition that none 
 of the gain accruing through improvements in produc- 
 tion or exchange goes to increase wages, all that gain 
 being absorbed by rent, 145-181. 
 
 WAGNER, PROF. ADOLPH, his recommendation that 
 municipalities acquire all city real estate, in order to 
 secure the progressive advance in its value, 138, 139. 
 
 WASTE OF THE SOIL, its relation to rent, 12, 51-53 ; 
 not influential with reference to the rent of building 
 sites, 138, 139. 
 
 WEST, SIR EDWARD, his announcement "of the law of 
 rent, 32. 
 
 WRIGHT, C. D., his report on the Factory System, 197 n. 
 
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