y^ INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN LAND ECONOMICS Urban Land Economics LECTURES BY Professor Michael Rostovtzeff Dr. Mary L. Shine Professor R. H. W^hitbeck Dr. G. B. L. Arner WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Dr. Richard T. Ely, Director " Under All, The Land " "My own conviction has long been that the land question far transcends any restricted field of economics and that it is fundamental to national survival and national welfare. It is truly a problem calling for statemanship of the broadest type." —Professor Frank A. Fetter Copyright 1922 R. T. Ely, Director FOR THE Institute for Research in Land Economics Edwards Brothers, Publishers Ann Arbor, Mich. X73 AL. INSTITUTE POR PJISEARGH IN TJ\ITD P>COKOMICS URBAIT LAED ECOKOMICS Introduction Richard T. Ely, Ph. D- , LL. D. Director, Institute for Research in Land Economics and Professor of Economics, University of "^yisconsin "UlTDER Ali, THE LAIID" "ITy oY/n co-aviction has long "been that the land question far transcends any re- stricted field of economicp and that it is fundamental to national survival and national ?;elfare. It is truly a problem calling for statesmanship of the broad- est type." - Professor Prank A. Petter. URBAir LMD 3001TOMICS Introduction Richard T. Ely j'or the first tirrie a course is nov; being given in Urban Land Economics. Yftien one considers how fundamental this subject is, it seems strange, indeed, and alnost incredible. Nevertheless it is in harmony v/ith a very general development of different scientific subjects. Adam Smith long ago called attention to the fact that the Sorange and unfamiliar first attracts scientific attention. Astronomy long precedes economics. It is believed that v;e cannot solve satisfactorily our various urban problems, including the housing problems so much discussed now, unless we approach them from the point of vievir of the land. It is the purpose of the Institute for Research in Land Economics to develop land economics in its various phases as essential for the scientific comprehension and the pr.actical solution of economic problems. T/e take as a brief motto the words of Mr. Forrest Crissey, "Under all, tlrie Land," and as a longer motto these words of Professor Frank A. Fetter of Princeton University; Hy ov/n conviction has long been that the land question far transcends any re- stricted field of economics and that it is fundamental to national survival and nation- al welfare. It is truly a problem calling for statesmanship of the "roadest type. Last summer in the Adirondacks I v;orked out the foliovdng outline for the course in Urban Land Economics as announced for the second semester of the present year, to be given by myself in cobperation v/ith Assistant Professor Martin G. Glaeser. UEBAE LAllD ECONOMICS as outlined by Richard T. Ely i. LAiro 3ELECTI01T Al© UTILIZATTON A. THE URBAN SITE Different causes operate to determine this, depend- ing upon stages reached in economic evolution and the social and economic conditions, obtaining in these stages. 5D.a7.47 1. Tne capital as the seat of ecclesiastical and political a.uthority. Cairo, Jerus?,lem, Babylon, iNTiusveh. Athens, Rome. 2. Early cornmercis-l cities. Sodom, Gomorrah, Carthage. 3 Modern cities with an unbroken history reaching hack to the Middle Ages. London, Paris, Berlin. The r-auses of their survival and growth. Vienna and its peculiar position. 4. Economic considerations continually in- creasing in their power over urhan locations. ^- Military considerations ^nd urhan land. In earlier ages and at the present time. The old walls and their removal, utili- zation of land thus freed. Ulm. Vienna and the Ring Strasse. 6. Man's increasing power over nature as seen in urban site selections and urban land utilization. Advancing stages in transport and com- munication. The v/heel barrov/ and man's back (China); animal power; boat transportation by rov/ing, Triremes, etc. Sails and the power of the v;ind; tlie canals and animal power. Nov/ other m.otor pov/er: steam pov/er ; auto-motors; aeroplanes. Man's increasing pov/er seen in the expansion of the urban area. Zones of expansion and concentration and intermediate zones. Grov/th and decay of cities as a result. B. SELSCTI017 OP lAED ^^/ITHIH TtlE CITY 1. With respect to purpose; areas for tr^^nsport and communication. Harbor' and shore lands. Land used for commerce; for manufactures and for residences. Residential land classes and variation in standards in different countries and places. Aristocratic classes - palaces. Areas for public buildings. Collective and individual selection. Control by public authority, by restricted use in deeds and by associations. Public opinion and its limits. Racial influences a-nd land selection and la.nd values. The negroes. -2- II. LAND VALUES A. HISTORICAL K3TR0SEECT "What is knovm about early land values? (Rostovtzefi-V/esterman) Mediaeval land values. B. CONTEMPORARY LAND VALUES. 1. R.M. Kurd's book. King's monograph. Rent and Values. King's formulas (V. his article on the Building ProST)ect in the Architectural Record, May, 1921). 2. Peace and prosperity - Degrees of stability of values and its importance for the general v/el- fare. 5. Land planning and the control of values. 4. Grov/th of population and land values. 5. In general, forces tending to increase and decrease land values; cominerce, industry, beauty, fashion. Growijag v/ealth and land values. The classical theories and Henry George; the test of experience. C. EARIISD AND UlIEARNED INCREMENTS IN VALUES AND ALSO DECRElilENTS III. PUBLIC UTILITIES AND UHBA^T LANDS The land occupied by public utilities and payments intc the public treasury made by public utilities. Relation of these payments to rent and to taxation. IV. CITY PIANNING AND ITS RELATION TO URBAN LA^TD PROBLEMS Land Planning can almost be said to be the very heart of urban land problems. (V. Aronovici's book on City Planning and many otliers; especially reports by John Nolen) V. TAXATION OF UKBAl^ LAIRDS -3- VI. El^LARGMEilT OF TIE UK3A1T A?J5A A. BY PUBLIC ACTION B. BY PRIVATE ACTION 1. Under laissez faire. 2. Under control- VII. URBAIT LAM) AITO C01Q}SIi[NATI01T Its principles and its purposes, VIII. UF3A1T LALTD Al^D TIIE HOUSING PROBLEli A. TENAIICY Al-ID HOME O^.'ITERSKIP B. THE HOUSING SHORTAGE Proposed solutions; single tax; the Calder Bill; Building and Loan Associations; constz-uc- tion "b^" public authority and at public expense; construction by realty companies and speculative building; individual construction. IX. CITIES AND AGRI CULTURE • A. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION WITHIN URBAN AREAS The significance of this production in back lots, larger gardens connected v/ith the hone and vacant lots. War gardens and vacant lots. A reserve and an anchor to the v;indv/a.rd. The utilization of othersise unoccu-oied labor-time in garden produc- tion within the cities;. Did the "¥ar Gardens" save the situation during the "World 'V/ar? B. THE CITIES AS A STIirOLUS AI-ID A I.IARKST POR AGRICUL- TURE C. T3IE CITIES AS RESIDENCES OP THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION 1. Tiiose actively engaged in agriaalture. 2. Retired far:ners and their prc'blenis. X. URBAN LAND AS AN INVESTlvISNT Various kinds of urban land investment; purchase and mortgage. -4- A. AS AN IITVESTIEUT ^-OR PUBLIC MD Q,TIAS I -PUBLIC BODIES Am IITSTITUTIONS: AS STATiiS , CITIES. COLLEGES, HOSPIT.flJiS, ETC. TliE Ei^GLISH COLLEGES Al© COLUlilBIA COLLEGE AS Lj^JIDOV/tlERS. B. PRIVATE PURPOSES 1. Trusteeships as in Boston; estates and their growth; the bearing of tliese developments on the fluidity of property (perpetuities - the dead hand, e oc. ) 2, Individual investments, suitability for various economic and social classes. XI. THE Om^RSIIIP OP URBAU LAITO A. Iin)IVrjUAL OY.lfflRSHIP B. COLLECTIVE O'TIIERSHIP 1. Private Corporations 2. Q,uasi-public bodies, including religious, charitable and educational institutions. . 3. Public ov/nership. C. THE FACTS XJJi THEIR SIGiJIFICAPrCE The trend of evolution. After this had been outlined, discussions vdth Professor Michael Rostovtzeff led me to invite him to give a brief course of lectures on cities in the ancient v/orld as a general intro-_ duction. A presentation T/hich he gave of large land holdings in the ancient v;orld before the Land Problems Seminar during the preceding academic year had shovm his interest in this subject and his large knowledge of it. His lectures are given as delivered. This is liae first time the ground has been covered and Professor Rostovtzeff found it much more difficult than he supposed to gather together the needed information. This simply emphasizes the fact, already alluded to. that the field is a new one. In- cidentally it may be mentioned that a learned monograph by Professor Rostovzefi on "A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C." has just been published as one of the University oi Wisconsin Studies in tlae Social Sciences and History. Fortunately architects are beginning to appreciate the fact that city planning and housing must be approached from the point oi viev/ of land economics. This has been admirably brought out in an article by Architect George Herbert Gray, in the Journal of the -5- American Institute of Architects for October, 1921. If we are to solve the housing prohlera v/e must knov« something about the various proportions in vhich the different elements of cost enter into the value of the houses to he constructed. The follov/ing is quoted from Mr. Gray and it will he seen tliat the facts, if he is correct, are not what a good manj'- suppose them to he. "Rent includes not only the capitalization of the ground and builc'ings theroselves, but general maintenance, insurance, obsolescence, commonly figured at about 40 per cent, leaving 60 per cent for the cost of building and ground. These figures give the following results : Rent = 100 per cent Proportion of rent due to cost (Less maintenance, etc.) of building and grounds = 60 per cent Land and utilities = l/5 of Buildings and Grounds, or 12 per cent Rav,' Land = 1/2 of Land and Utilities or 5 per cent These are only approximate averace figures but close enough to make it evident that the rav/ land is not, under normal conditions, a factor of major importance in residential properties." Let us take the question of tajx exemption in which at least a partial solution has been attempted in New York City. Tax exemption comes under the general head of the taxation of real estate E.nd before a satisfactory anff'.ver can be given to the problems involved in tax exemption v/e must examine. the whole subject of taxation of land and put it in its proper place in the system of taxation. The question of soning as part of the v/hole problem of city planning finds its proper place ?-nd its relations in urban land economics. Fundamental in scientific work and practical plans in urban land economics is the question of the movement of urban land values. 3o far as I am aware the first serious study of this subject ever undertaken is that v/hich has been conducted by Lr. G.B-L. Arner, whose lectures under the auspices of the Insti'tute for Reaearch in Land Economics were given as a part of the work on urban land economics. ^ They constitute one of the most valuable parts of the present volume- It is, however, only just to state that this v/ork was done under the auspices of a committee formed and financed by ITr . Alexander H. 3ing of Nev/ York City. The Co.iii-nittee included the follov.ang menbers: Alexander M. Bing, Richard S. Childs, Clarence Stein, Robert D. Kohn, Lawson Purdy, ITrederick L. Ackerman, Robert Murray Haig, Graham R. Te.ylor, Robert E. Simon, Herbert S. Swann, and ^An account of Dr. Arner' s researches may be found in the Quarterly Journal of Economics , for August, 1922. -6- CH. "J^iitalcer. Nobody assumes responsibility for these results except Dr. Arner. They were conducted in the finest scientific spirit and so far as getting preconceived results are concerned, the conclusions naturally drawn were quite different from those anticipated either "by Mr. Bing or Dr. Arner. As the subject is so nev; and as this volume doubtless will reach many who are not familiar v/ith the genera.l plane and work being conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Research in Land Economics and of the University of T/isconsin, it is natural to suppose tV^at the readers will desire to know the place that urban land economics occupies in the general work in land economics and to knov; what we understand by land economics. Land Economics is that division of economics theoretical and applied, which is concerned v;ith the land as an economic concept and with the economic relations which grow out of land as property. As science, land economies seeks the truth for its own sake. It airas to understand present facts pertaining to land ownership in all their human relationships, to e:cplain their development in the past, and to discover present tendencies of grov;th. As an art, it aiiac to frame constructive policies for particular places and times. A land policy takes as a starting point the existing situation with respect to the land, land as here used being equivalent to all 1!he natural resources of the country. It examines the processes of evolution by which the existing situation has been reached a.nd proceeds to develop a conscious program of social control with respect to the acquisition, ownership, conservation and uses of the land of the country and also with respect to the human relations arising out of the use and ownership. The basic v;ork in the series of volumes called Outlines of Land Economics, is to be brought out in three voluiii:3s this autumn in mimeographed form by Edwards Brothers of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who are bringing out this present work. The scope of the work is indicated oy the table of contents, This is, however, tentative and may be slightly changed in a few particulars. Characteristics and Classification of Land Volume I of OUTLINES OF LAilD ECONOfflCS Chapter I . Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI - Chapter VII. Chapter VIII - Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII . Chapter XIII. Chapter XIV. Chapter XV. Chapter XVI. Chapter XVII ^ Land Economics, Defined and Described Property, Defined and Described; The Economic Significance of Property- Relations Land Defined: Its Characteristics and Peculiarities Tlie Characteristics and Peculiarities of Capital Contrasted vdth the Char- acteristics and Peculiarities of Land Land Classification Land Utilization Qualitative Order of Land Utilization Possibilities of Increasing the Economic Supply of Land Agricultural Land Range and Ranch Land Forest Land Mineral Land Ownership of Water Shore Lands and Riparian Rights Land Beneath the "I'.'ater Public Utility Land Urban Land Costs and Income in Land Utilization Volume II of OUTLItTES 0? LAND EC01I0MIC3 Chapter I . Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII. Appendix:: Introduction - The Term Rent Rent and Surplus The Snergin'3 Costa in Lend Utilizr.tion The Margins of Production Elements in Land Income Pactors that do not enter into Land Incoiue Land Incorae and La,nd Valve Land Income and the Various Kinds of Land Urban Bents 7fe.ter Rents and Public Utility Land Rents Land Incorae a.e Determined bj'- Custom, Competition and Monopoly, The Socialization of Rent Land Values in lTe"w York City -9- Land Policies Volume III of OUTLINES OP LAML ECONOinCS Chapter I . Chapter II, Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. Appendix: Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. jjand Settlement and Home Ownership - A General Survey Land Holdings Tenancy and Ownership of Land Leasehold vs. Freehold Land Credit The Taxation of Land The Land Business Land Policies and the V/orld's Sood Supply A National Policy for Land Utilization Private Colcnization of Land Speculation in Land Luck and Chance in Success and Failure Conservation and Economic Theory Points to 'be Considered in Investigations of Landed Property ■10- Boolcs have "been published on many of the topics v;hich fall within the scope of land economics, hut they have appeared to l^ck close relationship with one another- This idea of land economics places these v/orks in their proper relation.^ to each other, and gives them a unity which it is believed will he helpful scientifically and practically. It is hoped that it v/ill very greatly "broaden out the interest in the subjects that fall within our field. Economic students of land problems have too generally failed to appreciate the fact that land planning, both urban and agricultural, is absolutely essential to their solution. On the other hand, city planners have too generally failed to appreciate that fundamentally their work must be based upon economics. Land economics, the as a concept opens up a great practical and scientific field. Urban land economics, it v/ill then be seen, is simply a development of one chapter or division (using the more general terra) of the Outlines of Land Economics . Economics of Porestry is the development of another division of the general field. The Outlines of Land Economics corresponds precisely to the Outlines of Economics as a general treatise. The Outlines of Economics surveys the general field, but many of the larger topics have been developed into independent treatises. Money, banking, railways, etc. afford illustrations. Similarly, we are developing the several topics covered by the Outlines of Land Economics. All this may be made clearer by the following list of books for which more or less definite plans have already been made. 1. Agricultural Economics - H.C- Taylor 2. Economics of Forest Land - Henry S. Graves^ 3. Characteristics and Classification of Land, Volume I in Outlines of Land Economics - Richard T. Ely*- 2; 4. Costs and Income in Land Utilization, Volume I? > in Outlines of Land Economics - Richard T. Elyv^j 5. Land Policies, Volume III in Outlines of Land Economics - Richard T. Ely^^j iZ) 6. The Taxation of Land - Richard T. Ely^ ' 7. Marketing of Earm Ero ducts - Theodore Macklin^-^^ (3) 8. Cooperative Marketing Organi zation - Theodore Macklm *■ (Already published ~|ln press "^'lu actual preparation. In cases where no name is stated, arrangements with the authors have not ocen completed- Announcement of the names of the writers will be made later. -11- 9. Scononiics ox' Marketing. 10. The 1/fc.rketing of VJhole Talk - H.E. Erdman ^ "'■ ' 11. SconoiTiics of liineral Lands ^'^'- John 3- Orchard (3) 1% ' 12. Economics oi" Coal^"'- John E. Orchard 13- Irrigation Institutions - Elv/ood Mead 14. Rural Sociolrgy - CJ. Galpin^"^' 15. Land Utilisation 16. P.ange and Ranch Land^^' 17. History oi Federal Land Policies - 3.H. Hihhard 18. Land Valuation 19. Urban Land. Policies - Ridiard T- Ely and Associates'^' 20. Introduction to Agricultural Economics - L.C. Gray'2J 21. Economics of Water Resources 22. The O'.vnership and Tenancy of Agricultural Land B.H. Hibbard and G.S. Wehrwein^^S) 23. The Marketing of Manufactured Products'^) ,(3) (3) 24. The Single Tax - E.B. Garver^ .,Pr( ,(3j 25. The Real Estate Business as a,Pjrofession - Richard T. Sly and Associates (3 ) 26. Land and Credit ^ 27. Farm Organization ^^ 28. Agricultural CSoperation^"^ "^ 29. Farm Bookkeeping^^ ^ 30- The Law of City Planning and Zoning - Frank B. 'Williams^ ^^ 51. Special Assessments 32. Land Problems of Planning 33. Frontier Finance in the United States 34. Land Values in the Gotten States 35. Land Values in the Grain States 36. Urban La.nd .Economics - Richard T. Ely and AFSociates '>.^ ) In addition to tl.e lectures v/hich are in mimeographed form constituting the present volume other lectures were planned as follov.-s: Cities and Agriculture Agricultural production within cities - George E. ",7ehr\7ein. Cities as residences of agricultural population -■ B.H.- HilD'bard Cities as stiTiiulns and market for agri- culture - Theodore Macklin Puhlic Utilities - M.G. Glaeser Condemnation - M.G. Glaeser City Planning - M.G. Glaeser Enlargement of City Areas - M.G. Glaeser Housing - M.G. Gla.eser Taxation of Land - H.B. Dorau Land Ov;nership - ULcliard T. Sly Individual Collective TQie facts and their trend Urban Land as 3j\ Investment - Richard T. Ely Conclusion - Richard T. Sly ^"'■'Por a variety of reasons the lectures I had planned for myself had to be condensed into a brief survey at the close of the course ^ One of the principal reasons v/as to give opportunity to the other participants in the course, as they required nearly all the too brief periods, two hours a week, set aside for this course. In addition to tv/o hours a week for lectures, one hour was given to quizzes conducted by my associate, Mr. Gla,eser. • 13" It seemed desiraole to cast about and see what resources we had for this work. "V/hile I have been much gratified to find how rich these resources are and feel well pleased with this first attempt in a course in urban land economics, the course vail be quite different as given hereafter and will be more unified. This statement is simply made to explain to those interested what is planned for the future. Pedagogically a course divided among so many different people is not sound as a permanent arrangement, but it has proved helpful under the existing circumstances. It is quite possible that as time goes on, two or three different courses may develop out of this one course in urban land economics. May I take this opportunity to express my warm appreciation of the cordial coBperation I have received from those who have participated in this course. The place and significance of the present work will be made still clearer by some further information about the Institute _ for Research in Land Economics , in viiich the needs for investi- gation is emphasized. The Institute for Research in Land Economics was founded in October, 1920. It has a staff of resident research workers and has the cooperation of a number of professors in universities and agricultural colleges, and members of federal and state depart- ments of agriculture. A group of mature and experienced graduate students has joined in its studies. The Institute has begun a number of investigations, and will, as it expands, take up others for ■vshich the need is great. V/e are face to face with the gravest economic.s^problenr arising out of landed property - problems that lie at the very foundation of our economic life; and v^hen we turn to economic treatises v/e find little to help us in their solution. Thoughtful men of affairs must realize the significance of landed property and all the arrangements that are connected with it as soon as these things are called seriously to oheir attention. Some of them already show an appreciation of what land questions mean for the future of civilization- Especially significant is the following quotation from the late Jaraes J. Hill, whose greatness and experience in developing a vast inland empire entitle his words to careful consideration- Land without population is a wilderness and population without land is a mob. The United States has many social, political, and economic questions - some old, some new - to settle in the near future; but none so fundamental as the true relation of the land to the national life. The first act in the progress of any civilization is to provide homes for those who desire to sit under their ov;n vine and fig trees. A prosperaus agricultural interest is to a nation what good digestion is to a man- -14- This relationship of the land to the national life is a question of property when we reach its heart, and all investigations of land problems which do not find their center in tlie institutions of property must be superficial and unsatisfactory, leading to no permanent solutions. Staff and V/ork in Progress. Members Present Subject of Resegrch Richard T. Ely Outlines of Land Economics Urban Land Economics The Taxation of Land B. H. Hibbard Tenancy History of Federal Land Policies P.L. Paxson Land Problems of the American Frontier U. Rostovtzeff Land Problems in the Ancient V/orld M.G. Glaeser Public Utility Lands Shore Lands H-B. Dorau Public Utilities The Taxation of Land A.J. Altraeyer Statistics Special Assessments Relation of Land Values to Public Expenditures O.E. Baker Land Utilization G.S- Wehrwein Large Land Holdings Parra Tenancy Public Land Policies Dr. G.B.L. A.rner Urban Land Values Mary L. Shine The Leasehold vs. The Freehold. Instances of Attempts to establish the leasehold system in the United States Ideas of the Founders of the i^jnerican Nation on Landed Property Bibliography for Land Economics D.D- Lescohier Land and Labor Agricultural Labor Clara F. Wigder Secretary and Research Assistant -ID- The character of the Institute is further indicated by the Board of Trustees, v/hicn consists of the following gentlemen: Justice M.B. Kosenberry (Supreme Court of T.'isconsin) President of the Board of Trustees Richard I. Ely (Professor of Economics, University of Vasconsin) Director of Research John H. Pinley (Late Commissioner of Education of the State of r-jv/ York and President of the University of the Sta-ue of New York. Nov; of the editorial department of the New York times) Colonel Henry S. Graves (Ex-Chief of the United States Pcrest Service) Henry C Taylor (Chief, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, United States Department of Agriculture) ¥. S. Kies (Banker, Aldred and Company, New York City) Albert Shaw, (Editor, The Araerican Review of Reviews) Finally, it may be said that the Institute for Research in Land Economics has no private aims. All the funds \^/nich are received are devoted to its work just as in the case of an endowed university. Richard T. Ely Director, Institute for Research in Land Economics Madison, T/isconsin, May 15, 19 22. -16' INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IH lAlTO ECONOMICS URBAN LAND ECONOMICS Cities in the Ancient I'orld ■by Michael I. Rostovtzeif, LL . D. , Litt. D. Professor oi" History, University of Wisconsin. "mOER ALL, THE LAilD" ■'My cvm conviction has long teen tiaat the land qviestion far transcends any re- stricted field of economics and that it is fundamental to national survival and national welfare- It is trulj'- a problem calling for statesmanship of the broad- est type." - Professor Prank A. Fetter. Lecture I. February 7, 1922. The Prehistoric Citios and the Cities of the Ancient Orient. Professor Rostovtzeff: Professor Ely, Ladies and Gentlemen: I do not know v;hether or not my course will he on land economics, but it v/ill be on economic and social conditions, that is sure. Now, what is my purpose in giving this short introduction to your work? It is to interpret one of the main problems of modern economic and social life. I do not know if you, being Americans, grasp entirely the importance of this problem; but I, being a Russian, grasp it fully and entirely. Now you will ask, "VJhy?" I will tell you. The problem I mean is the problem pro- duced by the existence in our social life of two different types of men, the country people and the city people. Of course, these two types exist in this^ country also, but, as far as I know, there is no such sharp antagonism, so sharp a contrast between these two types as there is, for exaaTiple, in Russia and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. If you think of what is happening now in Russia you will find that the main thing is just this contrast between the country population - .the peasants - and the city population, v;hiGh comes in very sharp crises of Russian life- There is, you see, a kind of suspicion and hatred which the country population, the peasants, feel toward the city population. They think that the city population are parasites, living at their, the peasants', expense; and at the same time that the city people are living at the peasants' expense, they are the masters and rulers, they de- cide the political and social conduct. Such IE the situation in Russia. It was in formation for centuries; it is not a thing which was formed during the last few years. Beginning with the earliest periods in the history of Russia, this contrast v;as in formation, and the outbreaks and the revolts cf the peasants against the cities are, in Russia, as old as the 15th and 16th centuries. Now, is such a rivalry, such an antagonism, confined to Russia? No'. Here in America it is less marked, although the economic interests of the country population do not coincide with tlie economic life of the city population. You see it just now in Western Europe. If you take, for example, Germany v.lth her large population of peasants; if you take such countries as Austria and the nev-/ countries that formerly formed a part of Austria; and partly what v/as a part of Turkey, like Rouraania; if you take France - i do not speak of England, Where tlie contrast is not so marked - you v/ill see that there is the same contrast, there a,re the same two types. Now, if you look at our civilization as our civilization v;as formed, you must say that it is a city civilization. It was formed in and by city people. Everything which was new in our "i civilization was first started m the city and gradually and / very slowly spread to tlie country parts of the land. J -18- ■vniat is the origin of this contrast which cannot be denied? The origin of this contrast, like tlie origin of our civilization in general, lie? in tiie ancient world. And, one of the main causes, as I v/ill shov; you later, of the decay of the ancient v/orld was a process vAiich v;as very much like tlie process which novi7 is going on in Russia. This contrast betv/een city and country population, this hatred hetv/een the two classes existed and the v;ar v.'as waged and organized "by the country against the city population, especially in the" third century A. D. Afterward the Roman Erapxie and later tlie Byzantine Empire based its pov/er on the peasant class. But the Roman civilization will be the special subject of ny last lecture. Y.aiat are the origins of this contrast and this antagonism? 'Xia axe the origins of cities and why in the ancient world, as you see it depicted by our literary, our documentary evidence, is this ancient world a v/orld of cities? If you read - read every ancient v/riter you like - you will find that life, really civilized life, was a city life. They did not think of themselves _as_iivi.ng outside and not in close connection with the city. You "have some idyllic tendencies, people looking tov/ard the country, 'but^ these are^ few in Greece and Roman times. But life in the ^country is^ not life, Life and..city_are identical. If you take The^Rbman Srapire and the Hellenistic monarchies and even the Greek world from the point of view of political, social and economic life, you v/ill see there an agglomeration of cities. V/hat is the origin of the conditions which are very near to modern conditions, where cities are grov/ing in importance and land and ccuntr;^ are retreating, just as you see, to the background, but remaining a.t the same time the real economic background of existence of cities. Koxv, the cities naturally rule, dictate to the country, and the country usually obeys the orders. If they do • not, Russian conditions come out - revolt and civil war. 7/l-ien Professor ISly was kind enough to invite me to give you my introduction to the course in urban la.nd economics, I thought m.y task v;as asi easy one. I would place a textbook in your hands and I v^ould give you riy comments on the text book. Great was my ^ astonishiTient when I saw that no textbook of this kind exists, and not only that no textbook exists but even that^^no serious research was ever done in this line. So what j. am giving youis entireljr ray own and my ov/n ideas, my ov/n arrangement of material, and my cvm' scale of evolution. That is why I cannot tell you Yiiat textbook you could take to help yourselves in following ray course. Of course every textbook on a,ncient history would do, but ths.t is only the background. You v/ill find almost no v;ord of what I have told you. Very little about political and social conditions. ¥fers are about all. But as a background of what I am going to tell you, of course every book on ancient history vrauld do. The best one, ao far as I know, is the book of Professor Breasted of Chicago, Ancient Times, because he pays much more attention than anyone else to" the development of civilization in the ancient world. But I hav e no book to naine v;hich M/ouid take the political and -19- social conditions into co^siderationj •'.7hich is one of the most Important bases oi" development of historical evolution. So you lee what I am giving you is my own coordination of existing material. Of course, there is no lack of material. There is plenty. On one hand we have the ancient writers; on the other hand we have thousands of official documents, thousands and thou- sands of documents of a private nature, contracts, leasehold contracts, and sale contracts; everything that you have in modern life is represented among the documents of the ancient world and in the oriental, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilization. You have finally the result of years and years of a.rchaeologi cai in- vestigation and excavations which first made us acquainted v/ith the city, not as described by someone, but as it was. Just imagine what would happen if Ma.dison a.nd all the other cities of America would decay in the same viB.y. and after 2,000 years some- one v/culd cor.-e and excavate and fii.d cities still having buildings left, but with the inhabitants gone, not exterminated at once, but having died out gradually. Nov; just imagine that such an accident as the eruption of a volcano, Vesuvius, would bury a large flourishing city with all tlie houses, temples, etc., etc, and that you would excavate it again. "7/ould you not get a real, vivid, lovely picture of what the city was? So I v/culd say that arciiR£o2^o^i^aJ._jnaterial is one of the most impdrtrant for maJctrrg ourTxl e as of "^he ancient cities clear and precise, and that is Wh.y-1 5.m. going to use very much the archaeological material, and that i'S v/h3^ "3C"oyganized my lectures in this way. In one lecture hour I will give a taik and the next lecture hour I will give ySu pictures illustrating the talk of tiie foregoing lecture. Let me nov/ come to ^y own subject in this introduction. Of course I cannot tell you what century it was when the first cities appeared, but I can tell you approximately that a.s long as mankind existed and as long as men were living not as individuals or in quite small groups, as long as the social life had its first start, some attempts at crea.ting cities existed. The first groups of men living together in one place and having a social life of the group is just a city. Because v/hat do wel T^e&n by city? First of all, an agglomeration of men living in' any one pla.ce, and second, and that was more important in the ancient v/orld, that this group was a unit from the social, the economic, and especially the political point of viev;. ITow, the \ origin of such a group, social, economic and political group, is as old as, I should say, the paleolithic age, when men did not ' knov; anything £ibout the netals and they did not knov*? how to polish the stones which v/ere used as tools. At this time archaeologists have already discovered large cave cities, cities consisting of scores and sometimes hundreds of caves cut into the rock or into a bank of a river. It is interesting tl^at such cave cities still exist and in great quantities. You have some such cave cities in Asia Minor, and Strabo, a contemporary of the Eiaperor Augustus, who lived in the first century B.C., er.d the first century A-D. , ' gave a vivid description of such cities- I myself visited such cities in the Crimea. They are an outstanding feature of some of -20- the Criir.ean ancient dv/eliings. These T;ere used in the prehistoric time and again they are used as living roons by the inhabitants, but tlieir origin is prehistoric. The more elaborate forms oi villages and cities, because there is no real difference as yet betv/een the -pillage and the city, appear in the neolithic age. In the neolithic period you already have more elaborate types of group dwellings, of cities, and of viila,ges. I v/ill show you next time some slides illustrat- ing the different types of these dv/eliings. The most important forms are, first, the lake divellings; second, the reproduction of the pile or lal:e dwellings on dry land; third, villages Torotected by v;alls not yet made of stone but of earth. These last villages v/ere of two types . ^ The first are villages v/hich v.-ere refuges on tops of mountains for the pop- ulation TThich lived aroxind this refuge and larger villages mostly in the plain v/hich included many houses and were surrounded by a strong wall, -where people lived rith their cattle and had gardens inside the \vall. The second type of large villages v/ere not only dwelling places, but economic centers of agriculture, and they are mostly characteristic for central Europe and especially for the Slavs, tiie Germans and, partly, the Celts, although the Celts knov/ more of the city as a refuge. A nev; tyjpe derived from these villages was a city a.s a center of a real state, v/ith a king at tiie head of the state, the residence of this king being the center of the city and dominating the country which lay around the city. This nev/ type of city is the evolution of the city refuge and I v/ili speak of it later on. Viiat is the leading feature, the leading cause, which brought people to build such cities? If you look at the cities as such you v.'ill see that the leading features are the fortifications. The cities were built first of all to protect the population from wild beasts and from the neighboring men, as, for example, the lai:e dwelling s. These are large villages bailt on piles in lakes very far rrom shore. They a,re connected v/ith the land by means of wooden bridges, sometimes very long, vliich could be taken av/ay at tlie first alarm. The reproduction of ttiese large dwellings on dry land v/as dictated by tlie same considerations. The terra- m-are in Italy (so called because later on v;hen the city decayed, the places of these cities, the mounds, consisted of blacic earth and black earth means in Itclian terra marna) are just re- mains of cities built in imitation of lake dwellings. Probably a population which was used to life in lakes came to Italy, found no lakes, and im.itated, for protection, tiie lake dwellings. The same leading feature is characteristic for the other villages of the neolithic and of the early metal ages: the -iTillages of the neolithic age, so far as v/e know, are all fortified. I know of no one vhich v/as not fortified. Such are the prehistoric be- ginnings. -21- But you iinc'.v that prehistoric life v;as transferred ir.to historical life in the IJear East and especially in tv/o places: the first is Egypt, the second, Mesopotamia. These countries are bimiiar from the geological and econoraic points of viev/; "both have hig rivers, and very rich alluvial soil. In Vae very be- giiinings life developed here just as it did in other parts of Asia and Europe. There are here the same fortified villages as the earliest dv/elling places of men. However, in the ancient orient, and not only in these alluvial places of the rivers, but also in central Asia and in the southern Caucasus and in Asia Minor and even in parts of Greece, - everyv/here you have a peculiar evolution of the political, economic and social conditions, I have no time to explain to you as far as I understand it, the reasons for the peculiar shape which social a-nd economic life assumed in the Near East. They are many and various. But the fact is that everyv/here here you have one outstanding feature of the social, economic and political development, the domination of the idea _^ that God and King are recognized and thought to be m.asters of the) land. God and Kingl Of course, first God and af terv/ards , as his representative on earth, tlie king. He is the master and the ruler, and that decides what form the city vrauld take in the oriental countries. The explanation for this predomination of God and king lies partly in the social and economic conditions; in the necessity of an organized group in this alluvial land under distress of the yearly inundations lAiaich required the canalization and draining of the soil; v;hich could not be done by one fam.ily or one small group, but required organized labor and a skilful and at the same time united direction of this land. This fact explains pretty nearly the peculiar organization of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but itdpes not explain why the same type of religious, social and political life exists in Asia iiinor as well, which has not alluvial land. Llaybe another cause was the fact that civilization v/as brought into the Near East in general by conquering tribes v;ho brought with them a higher civilization than the civilization 7Aiich they met both in Mesopotamia and Egj-p*. and in the rest of the Near East. There are, of course, theories v^ich regard Egypt and Mesopotamia as the places of origin of civilization in general, but with this I do not agree. The facts show that civilization was brought even into Mesopot^ffiiaT'^d probably into Egypt also, from some- v;here in Central Asia, and that here also, as in the rest of the Near East, the Tirst attempt at civilization was the work of conquering tribes who brought with them tiieir gods and who had military leaders . mlitary life requires unity, and the leader of these tribes was the god_. In Egypt and Mesopotamia the conquerors found conditions appropriaxe for perpetuating these ideas and for making them last for centuries and centuries. This type was just suited to the peculiar social and economic condi- tions of Egypt and Ilesopotamia. Under such conditions what was the city? Probably the con- querors met in both Egypt and Babylonia an already existing civilization, probably even fortified cities, but tlie cities of the conquerors were quite peculia.r cities. I will shovv you som.e -22- samples of these cities which were excavated during the last fev/ decades.' The city was the temple of the gods and the palace of the king - that v/as the only part of the city that v/as fortified and regarded as the city. That is the oucstanding feature of the oriental cities, and you find this feature in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Asia I'linor, Phoenicia, central Asia, also as far as ChJna, and also transported by Asiatics into the European lands, especially Greece. And I will shov/ you some very curious monuments of Sardinia, the Nuraghe of Sardinia, which testify to the same type of cities. These monuments of Sardinia still exist in great qur.ntities. These fortified buildings are just dwellings of kings and temples of gods. Such was the outstanding feature of the oriental cities. TSovr, of course, the city did not consist only of the temple and the palace. Under tiie protection of the fortified tem-ple and palace a population gathered. First of all there was i the retinue of soldiers of the king and there were the priests of the temple, who built houses near tne fortifications. These were sometimes large and beautiful. Afterwards comiiierce and industry attracted shopkeepers and artisans, who lived in poorer houses around the fortified city. But these places were practically not included in the area of the city. Th e c i t y. was,. ide n t i c aX w i ±Ja the god and the king, the city was the only place where the god and the king lived and ruled over the land, but at the same time it was the religious and political center of larger or smaller, territories. One of the most important historical features of the life of the ancient oriental world is the tendency to spread and to transform their small territorial states into larger empires. Imperialistic tendencies were born first in the Orient. The history of Babylonia consists of attempts to unite, first,^ the whole Babylonia under the sway of one god and one king and afterward to make the states and cities around Babylonia depen- dent u-oon the leading state. The same is true of Egypt. I'ou have fj.rst r.iany states in 3g;rpt, afterwards the tendency of one state to conquer the others and to rule over the irrhole countri)-, and as early as under the fourth dynasty, the third milleniura, B.C., you have im-Terialistlc tendencies, attempts to co^nquer - the shores of Phoenicia and Asia Minor. T^hen in Asia Minor ■■ the Hittite kingc'om i^iret appears, it appears as just such an imperialistic r)orer, and \7hen Crete by its v/onderful development formed a strong united state., the first tendency of Cete ws.s to build UTD a imritime em-oire. Tow, what is the consequence of these features for the history of cities? It is this: The oriental city was first the iDolitical center of the whole country ana finally of a larger" emoire. In the oriental monarchies tiiere exists only one city - tlie capital of the State, ./ai the agglomerations are not recognized as cities, and that is the origin of the dii^er- ence between city and village. Citi^_iQ_r the oriental empires xs the capital where_the leading god and king reside. For Babylonia it waV for a long 'time Babylon; for Assyria it was first Aesur, aiter- wardu Nineveh, etc.; for Egypt it was first Mem.phis and afterwarus Thebes: besides this city no other cities are recognised as such. -23- Al l other settlements are villages su"bject to the city and having hd^rigrTTofTtaking any part in the administration and in_tlia_ruXs of the empi re. The conquered cities v.-hich have "been themselves \ centers of independent states are either destroyed or exist as ' residences of vassal kings. The empire is ruled hy people who | live in the only city, and this only city contains in itself the, state as such. The king is almost identical with the god, his protector; the city is identzf ie'd-^rrth the god and the king; and "tii€-±cind is identified with god, king and city. That is the evolution in the ancient orient, and that is the outstanding feature of this evolution. Of course, the cities gror enormously. They assume quite enormous proportions and that is only natural. You understand what large and gorgeous cities ought to be the military, economic and political centers of such vast empires as Egypt beginning Y/ith the Eighteenth dynasty and Babylonia in the time of Kamurrabi and later. The same "is valid for Assyria, which created a conquering state, conquering even Egypt and entirely absorbing Babylonia; and for the Hittite Empire which dominated all of Asia Minor. You must understand what it means from the economic, social and political point of view. Thousands of people cai.ie to live near the ruler of these empires. Enormous commercial operations were carried on. Splendid houses of the officials, of the generals, and of the priests were built. One temple after another was built around the chief temple and the chief palace. The relatives of the king and his family lived around the palace. You must not forget that polygamy v/as practiced, so that the family of the king counted scores of members and sometimes hundreds. How these people had their own houses and temple^. The kings v/ere pious and built one temple after another. The temples v;ere not only centers of religious life, they were ^Elie~first factories. They employed thousands of slaves and these slaves brought the tech- ■ nique of ancient industry into such perfection that afterwards the Greek world had only to adopt this technique of the ancient order. 1 Hothing of this kind can be produced now. Modern technique can not compare v/ith it. The leading people like Lalicq of Paris and Paberger of Petrograd do not succeed in reproducing it because there v/as a finer style of technique produced v/ithout machinery. Now as you understand, every temple was a large factory, and not a factory specializing in one thing but an enormous factory spe- cializing in many branches of industry, with market places for more than one land, for all that come into commercial relation with the empire. And of course there v/as created a large merchant class. The merchan^^' had thousands of slaves and so had the priests, and the king had his army, and the courts must have been like a Turkish court in the lasc times of the existence of the Turkish empire. If v;e talk of 300 wives of a Sultan there is no exaggeration. If you take the v;ives and the slaves v/ho formed the life of a king it makes thousands and thousands. So it is not an exaggeration when Babylon is said to be a city of about 1,000,000 inhabitants. Of course, in such a city much attention was paid by the ruler to the palace and temple, but they could not leave v/ithout con- sideration these enormous masses of men v/ho lived in thp mnn-t -24- unsanit-^ry conditions. They were obliged tc take steps to improve the city as such and to form the first foundation of a municipal life. City planning, city regulation of the streets, some laws about building, and so on, vere certainly first elaborated in these capitals of the ancient world, in these capitals of the oriental monarchies. Such were the leading types of the oriental world and most of v/hat we can say of the oriental world is true of Jerusalem also, which v/as of the same type. The temple was the center, and^ when Jerusalem had a King, it was a combination of temple and palace. Of course there were some modifications. "Wiat you expect from me are the broad lines and you must remember this: the type of ^~— ~^ oriental city is the political center of a larger territorinl state empire, the city capital, the city residence, the city of a god sind of a king. -25- Lecture 2 - February 14, 1922. Greece. Mainland and Colonies. Let me first, oeiore beginning with the conditions in the Greek v/orld. sum up by means of a modern parallel what is my idea about the cities of the oriental world. There is only one parallel which I knovz - shovang tYie same relations of a large territorial state populated by peasants, one city which is the residence of the god and of the king, and if there are other cities, these cities depending on the main ruling city, or, so to speak, the administrative center for the central govern- ment - .and that is Russia. Of course, I do not mean modern Russia, after Peter the Great. I do not mean either Russia in its very beginnings. I do not mean the cities of Russia on the River Dnieper. These cities were commercial cities and had nothing to^ do with the later development of Ru.sia. I mean the Moscow Russia; that is, beginning with the 13th century down to the beginning of | the loth century. You have just the same features as before, an enormous land united by one dynasty leading one people -~ just the same as the Babylonian kingdom, the Egyptian kingdom, Assyrian kingdom, the Persian kingdom.. The population lived in the \ villages scattered all over the country and you have one city,! Moscow, the leading city, the city v/hi ch was the residence of \ church and the Tsar. If you take Moscow, ycu rill see what a striking parallel it shows to Babylon and to Thebes. Y ou hav e\ th e Kremlin , that _is_^u6t the temple of a supreme god and the \ palace of_th~e Tsar , and" .that is all. No other building e^a sTedi bnt the Kremlin, and around the Kremlin existed the enormous villages of Moscow of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. The city v;as the center of political life, administrative organization, military organization; that was tlie main cause. If there was some trend tov/ard indu-Stry, it was secondary. But don't misunderstand me. Such v/as the situation only to the second half of the 17th century. Afterwards Russia began to develop in just the same way as other European countries. But the explanation of my first point in my lecture before last, of the antag onismjjf the city and country, lies in this fact of the city being th.e_c_enter of dsminatibn an'd adi-ainistration* I could perhaps say more alDout tirrs— parallel" - Just the same type of serfdom, the same type of nobility connected with the Tsar as v/itli the king in Egypt and Babylonia, etc. But I do not like to press modern parallels, and| I am going on now to my main subject, the evolution of cities later on both in the Orient and in the Greek world. The type of city capital, the type of city residence, was not the onl;^- type of city in the ancient Orient. Along va th these cities, just on the shores of the. seas, we see an important inter- national comiTierce developed between the civilized lands in Meso- potamia and tire civilized lands in Egypt, betv.-een both of them and the Hittite Einpire, and more between the Hittite Empire and the beginnings of a Greek world in the Aegean and Mycenanean borders, with the center of commerce on the Island of Crete just -26- at that time, which coincides with the beginning of the second mixlen.um B-C Ycu notice the developraent of a new type of city on the Phoenician coast, I mean the famous cities of Tyre and Sidon, and the others which gradually covered the shores of the Phoenician coast, v;hich is the "best place for a maritime trade between the central Asiatic land on one hand. Egypt, Asia Minor and the Greek world on the other. Don't forget that land trans- portation, which is easy now because of the railroads, \vas a difficult and very expensive thing in the ancient world. A caravan cost much more than a good ship and it moved slov/ly, indeed. The animals, camels and donkeys move slov/ly. cost much to feed, are exposed to constant dangers and the difficulties of the deserts.^ land transportation was an expensive thing, and it was long before jfoads'were^buTlt in the ancient v/orld. Not before the Hellenistic IJ^riod and the 'period of the Roman Empire were they built. The oriental time knew only natural paths. So you see, if there v:as any possibility of avoiding the carrying of goods from central Asia through a long way to the harbors of Asia Minor, if there v/as a way to shorten the trip, that was a boon, and that was the reason why during this time some villages which were started by fishermen v;ho used to get tlieir living from fishing in the sea, and who invented a method of dyeing stuffs by means of a purple which was made from some little maritime beasts caught on the shores of Tyre and Sidon, became large trading cities. I will show you pla,ns of some of these cities and you will see that the type is always the same. It is most often not a part of a shore, but an island near the shore and barring the v:ay into a good harbor. Here the population v;as safe. But you understand that this population was Just a city, a group of men entirely devoted to commerce who migrated from the shore to the island just to take up, or to go on with, their fishing and dyeing of stuffs. But at the same time they became merchants. That does not mean that they produced things themselves, but that they were intermediaries between the Mesopotamians and Asia Minor and Greece. But they had brilliant profits out of it, because the shore of Phoenicia is full of v/onderful forests, cedar forests are still growing there, wonderful pine trees just as if created for building ships. They had, of course, by means of arms, by organizing themselves into well armed groups, the ability to control these forests and to have as much liimber and timber as they liked for building. This is another type, not a city which was a center of a \ large agricultural territory, net a city which ruled in the person | of a god and king, it was just a community of raerchantS; free men, who lived on their enterprises; and that is the first example of a~~t:Tue city state, -- that is, a city which was at the same tir.ie the state. Now, the oriental state was a territorial state, and the city was only an arbitrarily chosen center of this territorial state. Here the city formed the state. It may be that the city was ruled by an elected king; it rnsiy be that it was ruled by a senate of the oldest and most experiencea citizens; it may be that -27- the city created a kind of democracy. That mal:e& no difference. The moot important tiling is that it is a city which is at the same time a state. This city may acquire territory or land, it may develop into a kind of territorial state, but the nucleus v/as a group of merchants, industrials, sailors, and fishermen too (hecause they carried on fishing on a large commercial scale). Industry and trade developed also in the territorial state, hut you see the enormous difference het,v;een the type of city created by these merchant groups and the type of city which v;as created by the peasant state. And nov/ I pass on to the conditions in Greece. Just v/hen, in Asia, cities developed on the shores of Asia Minor, of Phos- nicia, Syria and Palestine, at the same time an analogous type of cities developed on the Greek islands. I should not say of strictly the same kind, but cities that were a combination of the oriential city and this merchant city were developing^every- where and especially in Crete. Look at the situation of Crete. It is just an obstacle, a kind of harrier betv/een tlie eastern seas ajid the seas of Greece. It was as if it v;ere created for a maritime hegemony, maritime rule, and it is no wonder that her large commercial cities developed and that these cities had the maritime rule all over tlie Aegean Sea. They sent out colonies just as did the Phoenicians. As the Phoenicians had wide com-ner- cial relations, they wanted to have, they needed to have, some merchant stations outside of Phoenicia in places where they were carrying on a profitable trade v;i th barbarous nations. They very soon directed their attentioVi to the West and here was ^famous Cartilage, which v;as first a commercial station of Tyre in Africa just for carrj'-ing out trade between Phoenicia and the mainland of Africa and became afterwards the center of trade with Italy, Sicily, Gaul, Spain, and as far as Britain where they v;ere going to get tin, a verj' rare product indeed. And from Spain they got silver and from Italy they got iron and copper — all things very much needed by the oriental world and especially tin for making bronze, as bronze was the main material for m.alcing weapons before iron came into general use. The Cretans did just the same. They sent out, to the East shores of Italy, to Sicily, to the Greek islands, and to the mainland of Greece, to Asia Minor, trading colonies, factories for trade, and in this way they populated for example the best places- of Greece. Hence arose the centers of Mycenae, Tiryns and others which were excavated later in the Peloponnesus. Such settlements were also in Attica where later Athens, the main city state of Greece developed and in Boetia. Don't forget "that the acropolis of Athens v/as first the place of the palace of the Aegean king who ruled over all the country and carried on an important trade and cora-nerce with the wild tribes of Greece. Such Vifere the beginnings of city life in Greece. ITo't pure oriental cities and not pure commercial cities; combinations of both. But gradually, in Greece, quite a new ty^^e of city developed. The origins of this type were many and various. Some places were centers of the Cretan and Aegean domination on the Peloponnesus and -28- in central Greece and in northern Greece. Some of the inland places had refuges and fortified villages of the vjell-kno\A/n pre- historic types. Out of all these beginnings graaually developed quite a new type of city, vhich dominated after\;ards for centuries and -which is still influencing our life and which still goes along vdth the idea of a territorial state and its capital. I nean the Greek ci tj^ state. Y/hen did it develop, we don't know. It is covered by the early "beginning of Greek history, "but we may guess about the origins. Greece at the beginning of the first millenium and at the end of the second millenium B -C , v/as gradually invaded by tribes coming from the Danube, vtiich passed through the northern part of the Balkan Penninsula and poured into central and southern Greece. They settled down here, they fought each other, they went up and down, and finally they found their last settlement where they remained for centuries and centuries. These nevv peoples certainly formed the city state. Y/hat is the city state? ¥i/hat is the difference between the ci tj^ state and the city of the oriental countries? Wiat is the difference between Athens and Babylon, between Athens and Thebes? As regards modern parallels there is almost no parallel to the development of the Greek cities. It is easy to find parallels to the purely merchant cities of tiie Phoenician and Aegean type. Everybody reiiiembers the Hansa cities, like Hamburg; of the same tj'-pe were the Baltic cities like Riga- More or less of the same type were Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. So it is easy to find parallels of merchant groups forming cities and living in the city, just exploiting tlieir domination of one , large part of the sea. But it is not so easy to find a parallels to Greek city states. The only parallel of which I knov/ rar.y be ) the cities of the Renaissance in Italy, some of them, not the maritime ones - especially cities like Florence. Tiiat is the leading part in a Greek city state? It is just this: Combination] of city and state. The city is no more a place, no more a center oT administration, the house of god and of the king. The city is now more an ideal than a place. The city means all the citizens who form the city. The body of the citizens is the first thing, the beginning; and afterv/ards they build a center vath the houses^ for the gods and places for themselves, to organize the self-rule of this group of men. So the Greek city is a ^ody of men. For "example > Attica, formed one city^'' and the city center of Attica was Athens; and if you go over Greece you will find certainly hundreds of such independent states vd tla cities as their center. Just imagine on such a small bit of land hundreds of cities and just imagine moreover that each island has a special city and some islands like Rhodes had originally many cities, - tiiree, four, five cities. Such a sms.ll bit of landl And now imagine this enormous Babylonian Empire v/ith one ci 1^ and the enormous land of Egypt with one city, and here hundreds of bodies of citizens living a free life, having a share in the self-rule, and being an independent and self sufficient political and economic body. Now that is the leading point. How it came about that such cities -29- we^e f'^rmed, I do not know, and you will not find any ans^ver to tnis puzzle in ancient history. You cannot help yourself T'fith modern parallels "because the Italian cities of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance were grafted on the Roman cities. They had the traditions of these ancient cities but here you have no traditions, and the city grows up like a wild flower, and that neans that for the firs F tine tlie idea of citizenship, of poli- tical freedom, o'f self-control and self-government, of self- rule, and of self-sufficiency was born. The first citizens in the world were Greek citizens. Nov/ you nay say that almost the sane thing existed in the Phoenician cities. It may be; we don't know. But the main Phoenician cities represented alwsiys a group of men vd th common economic interests and mostly commercial^ interests. Here you have different types of people; some live near the sea, fishermen; some in the forests, men who cut lumber; some in the plains; people who till the soil; some in the mountains, people who live by pasturing herds; but all of them united and created the cities. These cities v/ere of different types. I cannot describe all the types of Greek cities which gradually developed on the mainland and on the islands. It will suffice for my purpose to describe the most characteristic ones only. The type which reminds us mostly of the Aegean and Plioenician cities was the type of a purely commercial city state. Such were Aegina on a barren island near the coast of Attica and Corinth on the Isthmus between central Greece and the Peloponnesus. Both had almost no cultivable soil, and in both the population concentrated in the cities lived almost entirely on its commercial activity. Aegina was the intermediary between Asia Minor and the mainland of Greece; Corinth v/as on the path of traffic with Italy, which preferred to the long and dangerous rounding of the Pelopennesus the safer and shorter way through the Gulf of Corinth with the unloading of the cargo on the Isthmus. Another type was the type of a purely agricultural city like Thebes and other cities in the plan of Boetia. "We have two variations of the type; tlie city with a free population of small landov/ners. and the city witli a population of landov/ners on one hand and serfs, who tilled the soil for landov;ners, on the other. Such were many cities in Thessaly, the cities of the Island of Crete, and the most important of them, the city of Sparta in the Peloponnesus. The social structure of the city of Sparta vms the most peculiar of them, dictated as it was by the main idea of self-defense and self- maintenance by means of a strong military organization of the rulir: minority. But taking into consideration this peculiarity, we must say that Sparta was just a typical city state with a body of self- governing citizens in their rights and duties. The most complicated type of a Greek city state was that of Athens, which formed the political center of a comparatively large territory, not exclusively agi^cultural, with large pasture lands, good forests, some mines, and excellent harbors. ISfaturally conditions of social and economic life in Athens vi/ere more compli- cated than in the other cities, and the development of the city state took somewhat different forms. -30- In spite of these different social and economic conditions, deternuned partly "by the former history of those parts of Greece where they had developed the main lines of the evolution of the city, the modes of transformation of an Aegean royal capital or of a simple refuge of half -wild tribes into a real city state remained almost identical. Almost all the Greek cities v;ere created not by conquest or by violence but by a kind of under- standing between the different parts of the population, both conquerors and conquered. This process is comparatively v/ell- known to us in the case of Athens. Thucydides, the great historian of Athens, who knew about history as much as v/e know, who had a sharp eye for social and economic conditions, speaks of Athens as created by the act of synoecism. Synoecism in Greek means "settling together" and this means that many populated centers were united and formed one main center of political and economic life, one city:- many scattered houses, many villages, many refuges, many fortified villages, many tribes and clans, etc., come to an understanding and form one political body, one polls (city) and one politeia ( city-state) . Such is the history of the origins of the Greek city, and of v4iat enormous importance in history'. First of all Ll have not seen any social, economic, and political form which had so enormous and rapid success in historical evolution. One after another nevr cities covered, first, the 7;hole main body of Greece and then / spread as far as Macedonia and Epirus^ At tlie same time all the larger and sma-ller islands v/ere transformed into city states; no one island remained v/ithout a city. But the most important thing is that the city is like a bee hive. These men v;lio formed cities v.'ere continually swarming about. They sent one group after another to create new bodies, new bee hives, new cities. That is what is meant by Greek colonization, one of the most striking features of Greek history. It can but superficially be compared with the colonization of Ainerica. The first ground for colonization v/as the shores of Asia Minor as early as the end of the second and beginning of the first millenium, B.C., a troubled time of migrations and disintegrations for the oriental v/orld, which made the task of the Greek colonists an easy one. Colonies were creates by bodies of men well organized, all knomng what they v/anted and what they were striving for. They got together, elected a chief v.'ho was the founder of the colony, and they v/ent out looking for some place where they could live. Certainly it was dictated by the social and economic conditions of Greece. You know that Greece is one of the most beggar lands. It is mere poverty v/hich still reigns in Greece. Greece is not rich in pastures or fertile soils. It has almost nothing except air, much air, and plenty of sun. And there are almost no fish in Greece. It is poverty which reigns in Greece, and that was the leading motive for emigration and for colonization. Asia Minor is one of the richest lands in the world. It has v/onderful pastures, good mines of copper and gold, and wonderful opportunities for planting olive trees, vineyards, and for making very good gardens. It is also possible -■^1 - to pla it all of this in Greece, but it is lauch better to do it m Asia Minor where ycu can at the same time have rich fields which yield your daily bread. So "che colonies -.'ent out T:ith different purposes - people who used to live on fj sh locked for good places to organize fishing on a large scale and from where they could send lots of salt fisn to the mother country. Other people went out to look for places where it was easy to find rich fields not very well protected by the natives, and to subject the natives. Some went with tlie purpose of getting their living and at the_ same tine having good cormnercial opportunity in some place_ which was well situated. But the most inportant thing is that the swarms of Greeks coming out of the cities of the mainland started a ci+y everywhere they v/entj a city state of the same type as in Greece. They never were submerged by the natives. I do not know of one example. They were destroyed, but never submerged even in the Orient, which was a very civilized land. They never yielded to a foreign civilization. They thought that ti-ieir civilization was the best one, and they imposed tlieir civilization and their political life, and that means the city state- Such was the type of the Greek colony. One of the earlies-c colonies founded was Miletus. The Greeks never went far away from the city. They always populated the seashore, never went to the mainland. They were afraid of being separated from the rr.other country. The relations \;ith the mother country were never broken. They kept the relations jealously and they never forgot viiich city in Greece sent them out. So, for example, S^a-acuse never forgot that it was of Dorian origin. Miletus never forgot that it was an Ionian city. Miletus alone sent out eighty colonies. These colonies never forgot that their mother was Miletus. Here you have Greece; here Asia Minor. ^ First of all the important sites, harbors, valleys of rivers in Asia Minor were populated by Greeks and consisted of Greek ci 'cy states. Prom here and from Greece a colonization went through the stra.its (the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus ) and populated the shores of the straits and those of t}ie' Sea of Marmora by scores of colonies, one of which still is the capital of the oriental world, Eyzn.ntxu: , the old Greek colony, is now Constantinople, the center of Turkey and for a long time the center of the oriental world. They did n-. t stop at the Bosphorus, but went out on the inhospitable Black Sea, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, founding one colony alter another and of these Sinor>e, Srsgli (Herakleia), Samsun (Amisusi and Trebizond are still important- And it is interesting that no one of these Greek cities perished dvring the Turkish moyement. They went as far as the Caucasus and created two large cities^, Diosiuriaoand Phasis, and, not saxisfied, they populated all the western aad northern shores of the Tlacii Sea as far as the mouths of the Danube, Bug, Dniener and Don, and the Crimea. But they -^Prom this point on Professor Rostcvtzeff made constant references to the map . -22- went not only to the East; they v/ent also to the West. They covered the shores of southern Italy with colonies and Sicily, and went as far as Gaul and created there tirie flourishing city of Marseilles, and in Spain they created some cities. Here they -were stopped by Carthage, the mighty rival of the Greek expansion, and that is why they never populated Sardinia and Corsica. Spain also remained almost entirely in the hands of the Phoenicians. That is the type of the city state which introduced into the life of humankind so many nev/ ideas, our leading ideas of democracy and political tliought, which r;ere never created by tYie oriental people who could not understand them- These cities were disseminated all over western and eastern Europe. That is not the end of the history of the Greek cities. Next time I will finish the story before I begin to talk about the Hellenistic period. -33- Lectare 3- Feoruary 16, 1'j22. Conclusion of Lecture on Greek Cities . I have descrilDed to you the spread of the type of Greek city state all over the shores of the Mediterranean 3ea. You remember that Greece v;as the land of the city states. Here the mainland as well as the shores were occupied "by scores and hun- dreds of city states. Afterward almost all the shores of Asia Minor, tliat is, the western part of Asia Minor, were covered with Greek city states. The shores of tlie Elack Sea, the southern part of Italy, and almost the \^iole of Sicily, v/ere also places where city states developed one after another. The development of the Greek city states was checked by Phoenicians only. So the Greeks did not cone dovm as far as Phoenicia where tlie place was already taken by Phoenician city states, and Carthage, the Phoenician colony, prevented the city states of Greece from spreading tlirough tlie coasts of Africa over to Spain and up to the shores of the northern seas. Now, of course, the Greek city states had not all the same historical development. Some of tlian developed in one way from the economic and social point of view, some of them developed in a different way. I v;ill give you briefly the most important types of the Greek city states, not from the political point of view, because from that point of viev/ they were all alike, but from the economic and social point of rievj, and from the point of view which interests us all, that is the point of viev; of the city as such. From the social and economic point of view, and the point of view of the city development, you may divide the Greek city states into three large classes. One class was the coimn ercial , the trade cities, the center of commerce and industry. I have already na."nec to you tv/o of these cities and explained to you the re?son for their development. They were Corinth in the Istl-unus of Corinth between the Peloponnesus and Greece and the island of Aegina. The latter is perhaps .the most striking example of a coranercial city. It was a small island, very poor indeed, with untillable soil and only some woods and rocks. And still it \7as one of the most flourishing cities in the Greek world in the 7th and 6th centuries, B.C., as is showh by the abundant coinage which became tiie leading coinage in Greece of this time. The most important thing is that it was due entirely to an enormous development of commerce and industry. As a place of exchange where goods v/ere exchanged between the different city states of Greece and between Greece and Asia Minor, Aegina grew rich and important. Such is one type - pure merchant city, pure industrial city. The second class is made up of uhe pure agricultu.ral cities, the leading city having a military and agricultural organization, that is Sparta. Another city or a conglomeration of cities of the same type^lms^si'tuated in Thessaly, in the large land of Thessaly, -34- v/hich was very rich, indeed. Thessaly was, again, a land of asriculture, v/here the cities v/ere tie centers of purely agricultur- al land, and there, as in Bparta, v;e find a body of landowners and a body of serfs working on the soil. The social and economic organization of Thessaly was not quite the same as in Sparta where you had as the ruling body a military organization or citizenship. In Thessaly you had a pure aristocracy of landowners v:ho lived in the cities and ruled over the serf population. Hov/ever, the main point is that there are two examples of pure agricultural cities. ITov; the third type is a mixed city, of a mixed type, not of a pure t;irpe. it is a combination of a city as a center of an agricultural district and of a city as a large corainercial and industrial place. Such cities (I will show you some slides) are represented best in Greece by Athens, and in the colonies by the tv;o leading colonies, - first in tiie East, Miletus, and in the ¥/est, Syracvise. Here you have first of all a comparatively large agricultural district populated by peasants, the city being formed partly by citizens through an understanding, and partly by colo- nization. Syracuse v.as a Dorian colony; Miletus, a colony of Attica. The main point is that in all three cases you have the same type of a large agricultural district populated by peasants and a leading and ruling city as the representative and as the center of this large body of citizens. But there were differences between the colonial cities and Athens. In Athens you had a body of citisens who owned the land of the territory. It is a large body of city population on one hand with the occupations of a city, and, on the other hand, of peasant landholders spread all over the country. Of course they had a fev/ slaves. But the main point is that it is a state, organized on democratic lines from a political and economic point of view. The raadn body of popu- lation is made up of free citizens who are, a.t the same time, landov;ners. How in thTe "c'olonies you see a different organization. rrTs ~a body of Greeks coming to a land already populated and already flourishing, v/ho first built a city near the coast on an island, aften^/ard moved to the i.iainland, conciu-ered a large tract of land with a population, and formed the city aristocracies ruling over a large body of serfs who tilled the soil for them.. In Syracuse it was an aristocracy of landcvners . It seems to be the s ame type as in- Sparta and as in Tliessaly, but it is not. The agriculture and the cultivation of land were only the starting point. The next point was just the same development as the democratic city of Athens, a larg- development of commerce, in- dustry and related occupations. It is explained in Miletus because that was the interiaediary between Greece and the Orient. Miletus was the outlet for the civilized land of Asia Minor. ITow here, of course, some industries had a very high technique. I spoice of the technique of the oriental vorld. This technique was taken over, improved, and modernized on Greek lines, by means of a very larg,e body of slaves organized on fac-U)ry "lines. And so you see the Orient came into Greece, and the oriental skilfulness was usedby the -55- Greeks for Greeks acad for intarrational coramerco. As such a center of commerce and of industry Miletus developed tnto a large, well populated city, populated of course by citizens only and "by slaves. The serfs v/ho vjorked the land "becaine quite unimportant for the further development, and it is ouite possible that serfdom T;as soon transformed into minor forms of citizenship. In Syracuse there was almost the same development. Syracuse is still a large center of commerce in Sicily, and ->-vas much more important in the ancient times because it vas the main point where the commerce coming from Italy and the '7/est met the commerce from the Orient. Such were the large commercial, industrial, and at the same time agricultural cities. Of these cities the destinies of Athens v;ere the most important because of political evolution. Athens gradually, after'the Persian Wars, became a center of a political organization -ivhich took in almost all the cities of Asia I;y.nor, all the cities of the islands and i^iany cities on the coast of the mainland of Greece. It was a federation of some hundred cities, a large state, v;here Athens, more and more, got the leading part both in politics ahd in economics. By means of a policy v/hich was carried out by Athens, Athens soon became the_ leading harbor and the leading commercial center of this large district of^ industrial, comiT-erci'l and agricultural cities. It lasted for about one century, but it \"as enough to make out of Athens the largest and most beautiful city in the Greek world. And now it is very interesting to see how under these circumstances Athens, just like Miletus and Syracuse, developed as a city. First of all Athens v;as not situated near the sea. It had tv;o wonderful harbors, Piraeus and Phaleron, some miles from Athens. Athens should, of course, in the times of its maritime supremacy have spread from its place on the inland to the shore; but it did not. It built a large modern harbor on the lines of elaborate scientific plajis, just on the harbor or near the harbor of ir-iraeus. ^That was quite a modern city, v;hich had not happened before- The cities before and the colonies grev/ up as mushrooms, one mushroom and afterwards otiaers around it, and so on and so on. The center was the political center, the acropolis, temples, theatre for shov.'s and popular assemblies, \7ith public buildings, and no one paid attention to how the rest of the city Tvas developed. And so grev; up all the colonies and all the cities on the mainland, as, for example, many cities in Europe grev/ later. Many cities, for example, in Italy grev; up in the same v;ay and that is the reason v/hy the streets are narrov;, the conditions unsanitary, the houses situated in different directions, etc, etc., and everything is chaotic. But in the fifth centuxy science and especially mathe- matics, and in connection with mathematics measuring of land on the basis of geometry, v;ere already developed to such an extent that v.'hen the harbor of Athens was built, it v/as an entirely new city for the purpose of serving the empire of Athens. The lines were dictated by an architect. The city was planned on geometric principles, the streets were broad and straight, they crossed at n.ght -36- angles, pu"blic places \7ere planned at the beginning. The harbor, from the "beginning, v;as "built as an artificial har"bor with quays and docks and everything for ship-"buildLng, etc., etc. Large storehouses were built at once, presenting just the appearance of a great modern harbor, as for example. New York, vd.thout of cou^rse our improvements. That was a new device in the history of a city. At the same time what v;as important in the development of the city of Athens itself is that the city was not the residence of the king and clergy, but existed for the citizens, not for somebody else. And so the body of citizens tried to regulate- \ life in the city, to make it easier, to make it more comfortable and better for everybody who lived in the city. That was the beginning of state regulation of city life. The first magistrates who v/ere not political magistrates of the state, but had the sJ^^aX'^business to look after the city streets, to see that they were cleaned.to see that the food supply was in regular quantities, e^tcTTlArare ""created in Athens and were called, I may say, city mayors as now, astynomi. Asti means city, nemein means to care for. \7e have people or men elected to care for the city. '7Je have the first laws on city life, how to build houses, how to keep in order the streets, who was responsible for the dirt thrown out from the houses onto the streets, who had to carry it away. (7/hich by the way 7;ould be a good thing in Madison). Plato in his works refers to this activity of the astynomi and gives some plans as to what the regulations of city life should be. As the city of Athens and the other cities of this type grew up widely with enormous strength, the population grew also, and of course the conditions of transportation were such in the city, without tramcars , subv.-ays, etc., that the cities were large in numbers of inhabitants, but small in size. That means that the land ih the city became more and m.ore expensive, and that instead of the old type of house which served for one family, the type of houses v/hich served for many families and some apart- ments replaced the old type of fainily house. And along with this, speculation in land and in houses was developed. This was the first time that speculation in land occurred. Later on you wilL see what enormous developm.ent it took in Rome, the capital of the world. "We first meet the question of land speculation in Rome, but it was already prepared for by the evolution of such cities as Athens. The Hellenistic Period. The empire of Athens did not last very long. It was checked by the ambitions of Sparta, v\hich was the leader of political life in Greece. Aiid you knovi that the tremendous v/ars for Greek supre- macy developed between the tv;o leading cities, between the maritime city of Athens and the agricultural city of Sparta, the Peloponnesian Y/ar . This war is compared wit'n the fight of a whale and an elephant. And it is so. This enormous sea monster, Athens, and this enormous land monster, Sparta, It ended in the victory -37- of Sparta. Both parties were vanquished, and Greece began politically to decay. I should not like to fortell the decay of Modern Europe. Sparta was as well vanquished as Athens, but the main point is this: Of course as a result of the war the Persian monarchy reigned again in tlie Trreek v;orld and the oriental world became, so to speak, the ruler of tlie destinies of the western world. But at the same time in Greece, in Macedonia, developed a strong united monarchical state and this state was ready to begin the fight for domination against Persia, trying to unite v/ith it the forces of Greece. Its first task was to unite Greece vath Macedonia under the rule of one king, and the two kings, Phillip and afterwards Alexander, succeeded in doing this. Afterv/ards the main purpose was to check the avalanche of the Persians. As you knov; Alexander moved first against Asia Minor, to free the Greek cities, afterward to Mesopotamia, finally to central Asia, and conquered the v;hole of the Persian Empire; and you know also that this enormous empire, the Macedonian Empire of Alexander, did not last for very long. Alexander died very soon, just at the end (not yet the end of his political plans'), but at the end of his conquest of the Orient, and after him his empire was divided into many monarchical states of which the leading ones were just the old states of the oriental world. First of all Egypt, the second f^-ria, Meso.potamia and Central Asia, and the third v/as Macedonia ruling over the Greeks. Later on the process of disintegration was going on and one new empire after another was formed. First of all some states in Asia Minor, especially the state of Pergamum v/hich occupied the best part of Asia Minor. TiJhat did it mean from the historical point of viev/ and the point of viev/ of the development of cities? It means that now the Greek world was no more confined to the mainland of Greece, to the shores of Asia Minor, and to the southern shores of Italy, and to some places on the shores of the Black Sea. No morel The Greeks became the ruling nation in many states v/hich covered almost all of the civilized world at that time. It means that as Alexander was a Macedonian and vi/as a Hellene, as his generals who took over the rule in different lands were also Macedonians and Greeks, the Greek nation was now the ruling nation in both the Orient and the Occident, and tiiat meant that devices of Greek life were introduced into places where nobody had heard anything of them before and where the devices of oriental life reigned supreme. Greek life poured in, not only on the shores of Asia Minor, but inland. It poured into Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia and Mesopotamia, and also into Turkestan. It is interesting that the leading cities of Turkestan were created by Alexander the Great; and tliis Greek influence went dovm as far as India, but there it did not last. But in the rest of the v;orld it lasted from about 300 B.C. down to the time v/hen Rome conquered the Orients But that did not mean the i end of Greek influence and predominance, because Rome was only the I follower of Greece and took over tlie work begun by the Greeks. j -38- Now what did it mean - this introduction of the Greek lines of life? First of all it meant the introduction of the type of Greek city into oriental life, and that was the "beginning of a spread of the Greek cities all over the Orient. You will see that the same task was taken over and achieved "by the Romans in the West, and that is the origin of European city life. In the Orient, cities grew up one after another, covering the main hody of Asia Minor, parts of the southern Caucasus, Assyria, Babylonia, even Egypt, although they were not called cities in Egypt, but villages. Nov:, again, what types of cities developed in the changed con- ditions of life, - "because the conditions v.rere changed?^ The city state was no more the ruling political form of civilized life. Most of the new states were mere territorial states, ruled by monarchs v/ho took over the traditions of the oriental monarchs. These monarchs, knov/ing that they existed and ruled so long as they had a Greek army to support them and the Greek population of their king- dom to back them, were not purely oriental rulers. They tried to form a compromise bet-veen oriental and Greek life, and this means that they were obliged to give to the Greeks the possibility of living conditions such as they were accustomed to, and that means living in cities, each having a territory of land and self govern- ment as far as internal affarrs were concerned. They paid taxes to the treasury, but the rest v;as left to the Greeks. "Do as you like, govern yourselves, and rule yourselves as you like," that v/as *"he main compromise, the compromise betv;een the oriental monarchal power at the head and self-governing territories forming the main foundation of the state. Of course, the territories of the cities did not cover the whole of the territory of the king- doms. They covered the most fertile parts of the territory. The rest was populated by subjects of the king, living in the same conditions of serfdom that existed under -the oriental dynasties. That is a fact to retain and not to forget: that the largest part of the population was still living on oriental lines under the oriental monarch. But at the same time, in all these masses of population living an oriental life, were introduced larger and smaller islands of Greek civilized life. Novr v;hat did it mean for the development of the cities? First of all it means that quite a new type of a city developed with a division of the empire into many independent kingdoms and the formation of new capitals in the new states; this type was a combination of an oriental capital with the type of a comr.ercial and industrial city which is best represented by Athens. I should say a combination of Moscov^/ and London, because London is the best parallel to Athens. It is Vae head of a maritime empire, and a commercial center. Sich a city was first, of all, the leading city in commerce of a new world, created by Alexander himself - the capital of Egypt, on the sea, transferred from Memphis and Thebes on the river to Alexandria on the sea. (That means a complete change of all conditions of Egyptian life. It means the Hellenization of Egypt). The city grew large and rich at once, as it was backed by the richest country in the v/orld of ancient times. Egypt was alv/ays the richest country in agriculture, and so it was -39- only natural that Alexandria should become the capital of the^ Hellenistic world. Alexandria was not alone in the Hellenistic world. A city "built at the same time, as near as possible to the sea, on the river, v;as Ahtioch, the capital of the Kingdom of Syria - the same type of a capital of a state ruled by one monarch, built on Greek lines and administered on Greek lines. The same was done in the other monarchies of the Hellenistic _ world: the ephemeral Thracian kingdom of Lysimachus, Macedonia, etc. In some places where Greek cities were already in existence the Hellenistic kings transformed one of these into a capital. So did the Pergamum kingdom v/ith the city of Pergamum, which v/as entirely rebuilt and filled vath the best buildings and artistic vjorka. So did also Bithyraa, Pontus and the rest. Most of these nev/ capitals were purely artificial cities. Modern parallels are Berlin and Petrograd. These are also arti- ficial cities built by kings, and are combinations of cities of the oriental type with the cities of Greek type, or European type. They are residences and capitals, and, at the same time, centers of commerce and industry. Such artificial cities of course v/ere built on the lines of the most modern achievements in science and technique. Athens v/as a poor village compared with the beauty of Alexandria, v.'hich was built on the lines of_ scientific town planning. It had large blocks of houses, straight broc-i streets crossing each other at right angles, wonderful canalization •- we laay be able to restore the main features of the city of Alexandria while investigating the canalization - and a very good supply of water. In the center of the city v/ere^ the palaces of the kings with wonderful buildings, and among these buildings '.he first academy of science, just like the Berlin or Petrograd academy of science. Scholars lived at public expense and were obliged to teach a little for advanced people, especially for introduction into research work. The people of Alexandria were the first to build a zotJlogical garden. They were the first to build up a real gallery of pictures, and they were the first also to create a library, a public library. The library was the most famous in the world, and its disappearance was due probably to the Arabs, xiho burnsd at least a part of this library. Of just the same type was Ahtioch, and the German excavations of Pergamum show that just the same thing was going on there. In Pergamum, for example, v;e have still the ruins of its famous library, the rival of the Alex, xdrian library. So the main point is a large artificial capital built not only for the king and for the court and for the gods, but built also for the citizens, with tlie best possible comfort for the citizens, built to make life easy and comfortable. But the same thing happened at Athens that happened in Alexandria. Means of transportation limited the city, concen- trated the population, and houses grew up like the_ skyscrapers in ITew York. Not so big, of course, but comparatively big for, Alexandria. I vdll shov/ you some slides next time, and you mil see what these capitals v/ere like.' -40- ' Along v.'ith the building of capitals we have a consequent trans forniat ion of the territories of the Hellenistic kingdoms, except Egypt, into a conglomeration of city territories; this was done "by different means and in different ways. One of the most important was the foundation of military colonies. The Hellenistic kings ruled, of couree, by mere force over the population which did not recognise them and did not like them. They ruled only because they were rich; they imposed tajjces on the subjects and were able to pay a large mercenary army consisting mostly of Hellenized or Greek people. This army was necessarily a standing, permanent army, and as such it was a heavy burden on the finances of the king- doms. To keep the army busy in peace times and at the same tirae to diminish the burden of the treasury, the Hellenistic kings formed the soldiers into military colonies, settling them in a nev; city and giving them large parcels of lajid which formed the territory of the city. The same devices were used for the veterans. Such was one type - ttie military colonies of soldiers and veterans. A second type was the colony of emigrants from Greece, who came to look for new opportunities in the economic life, and who asked for places to develop their activity in tlie new monarchies. Some of tiiese emigrants were absorbed by the capitals, but the larger part formed new cities with large territories. This was the third type of Hellenistic cities. And a fourth type was a re- modexiiig of old Greek cities on nev; lines, which was made possible by the enormous wealth acquired by these cities because of their new relations with the Orient, more or less the same thing that happened in Spain after the discovery of America. Most of the old Greek cities, especially in Asia Minor, were rebuilt on nev/ scientific lines, giving the population just tiie comfort and the ease which v;as required by everybody, by what was then a civilized man. Needless to say, the same was the case for the cities which were first built during the Hellenistic period. -41- Lecture 4 February 23, 1922 The Roman Empire Thus far I have dealt mostly v;ith the Oriental world and with the Oriental part of the civilized world. The regions of the Near East, Egypt, Asia Minor and Greece attracted oux chief attention- But remember that our problem was to investigate the conditions of city life in "Western Europe, where city life had 3 more brilliant development than in the Orient, and where city life was the foundation of the future development of civilization and of civilized life for state and people. In the Orient the cities did not thrive for very long. You know that the late Roman Empire had its main center in the Greek city of Byzantium, nov/ Constanti- nople. But this is almost the only great city which remains from the ancient times that still has an importance in the history. of civilized majakind; and of course, as you remember, in the earlier times it was not one of the leading cities of the Oriental v/orld. Byzantium played in the history of the Greek world rather a modest part until Constantine, one of the Roman emperors in the 4th century A- D. transferred one of the centers of Roman state life to this rather modest place. Of the other cities I have named to you, only Athens, anyrna, and .Alexandria still exist as comparatively impo? '■'^.nt centers of city life; but compared with the importance which these cities had in ancient times, their importance of to-day is almost nothing. Athens is the capital of modern Greece. Modern Greece has a certain part in tlie life of the Near East of to-day, but, as you knov/, the ¥ear Ea=^t does not play a very important part in our economic and social life in general. Smyrna, the capital of Asia Minor, is in the same position. Alexandria is still the main harbor of Egypt. The capital is the old Memphis, the new Cairo. Alexandria is one of the harbors of the new modern Egypt, but its importance cannot be compared with the importance of ancient Alexandria. Of the other Oriental cities I could not name one which has the importance which many of the citied of the Greek world had in the ancient times. quite different are the conditions in T/estern Europe. You know that Italy is nov; a congloraeraticn of cities- I know of no journey of two or three hours that can be made there without passing' important cities. Italy is full of cities. If you take France, if you take Spain, Belgium, Germany, even the lands of the Danube, you have everywhere the same picture. Cities one after another. Try now, for exaiP.ple, to travel on the Rliine. You will see almost no interruption betv/een the cities which are situated on the Rhine, and I should say that a large part of Belgium is one large city. You pass through some places in Belgium where there is no free space between cities. The same is the case in the southern part of England, and America, as I have told you, is under the same kind of development. -42- I must come nov/ to solve the question of the origin of this city life in V/estern Europe. It is a problem of modern evolution, of evolution in the Middle Ages and afterwards in the time of the Renaissance, or is city life older and more ancient than that? as you look at the map of Western Europe nov/adays and you try to fix the history of the most important places you will see that, for example, in Italy you have no one city which is not standing now on the ruins of an ancient city. For example, Florence, Milan, Genoa, the largest cities of Italy, are all situated on the place where cities were already flourishing in the qncient times. Of^ Rome you know the story. I do not need to explain it to you. City life never ceased in Rome. The same is true ahout Naples, all the cities of Sicily, etc. In France -Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, etc. were cities in the Roman tine. On the Rhine almost all the leading cities are ancient Roman cities. (Cologne, Mainz, Strassburg, Bonn, Tieves, etcO In Spain it is just the same, anji almost all the leading cities and capitals on the Danube are heirs of a Roman city (Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sophia, etc.) It is nece: they developed. Western Europe into city territories? You must include in Western Europe the northern part of Africa also. Although nov; northern Africa is no more a land of cities, like the rest of the Orient, in the Roman times it was a land of cities as well as Germany, France. Italy, etc. But later we have the destruction of the leading cities in Africa and the preservation of only a few of them. Such are the conditions. Now what is the origin? If you take Europe at the time when cities were developing, first in the Orient and afterwards in Greece, Europe v;as in no way a land of cities. Western Europe was covered with the type of prehistoric centers of social life of v^ich I have spoken in my first^ lecture. Protected fortified villages, refuges for shepherds and agriculturists, lake dwellings partly imitated on dry land, such were the types of centers of social life in western Europe as far down as, I should say, the 6th and Sth centuries B.C., the time when the Orient and Greece especially v;ere already covered v/ith many cities - Where did the city life originate in western Europe? Of course in Italy'. And you understand perfectly well v/hy. Of course, Carthage in Africa did not play a very important part in the development of city life in the western world. Carthage wasa commercial city and exploited the r;estern world from the commercxal point of view, as a clace of exchange between the Orient and the western part of the European world. Of course, Carthage founded many colonies, but these colonies were seldom cities and centers of city life; they were very modest and not propagating, just stations for commerce. Some of them were situated on the .shores ol Sicily, some in Sardinia, a few in Corsica, many in Spain. In Britair; we have not yet discovered one of these stations. All -43- that we know is that the commercial relations were important. So Carthage did not play an important part in the development of city life in the "7/est. More important was the part played by the oriental and Greek world* by the oriental v;orld "because a part of the population of Asia Minor emigrated, probably about 1,000 B.C., from Asia Minor and went to settle down on the shores of Italy, I mean those mysterious people, the Etruscans. He can read their inscriptions, but we cannot understand them. But we know a great deal about their civilization, and so we are able to judge that the main foundations of this civilization were of the oriental type flourishing about 1,000 B.C. in Asia Minor. Now the Iltruscans, even v;hen in Asia Minor, -.vere in relation with the Aegean and Greek v/orld. Very soon they developed a half Greek life in Italy also. They remained in constant relations with the Greeks and v/ere under the strong influence of Greek forms of social, political and economic life. So they formed in Ztruria a nucleus of some scores of cities on the Graeco-Oriental model, on the model of the Greek cities in Asia Minor. They were abodes of a conquering population of big landov/ners and v;ealthy merchants, who lived under the protection of their v;alls built of stone, and who dominated the land populated by peoples of Italian origin who worked for them as serfs. That is just, as you see, the .j^e of half oriental life in Asia Minor. That was one spot which was the first center of city life in Italy. The second was in southern Italy and Sicily. I have told you these places v;ere for the ancient world just v;hat America was for England in the colonial period, and many scholars indulge in the drawing of a close parallel betv/een the development of Anerica - the Great England, in regard to England and the develop- ment of this Magna Graecia on the shores of Italy. That is not very important, but it is interesting, because Greek civilization v;as implanted in Italy in leading and very important cities many of vvfhich still keep their importance as centers of social and economic life. For example, Tarentura is situated on the site of a large and important city which existed all through the Greek times and the times of Roman domination. Naples, v^as one of the main harbors of the Greeks, beginning with the 7th century B.C. and is still the leading southern port of Italy. Syracuse, the center of a large Greek state, was one of the largest and most beautiful cities of the Greek world. Although it is now not as important as it was, it is still existing as a city; it is one of the important cities of Sicily, though, of course, not as important as Palermo. One city after another v/as built in Italy by the Greeks, with all the realities of city life; and this process began as early as in the 9th century B.C. and lasted through the 8th, 7th, and 6th centuries. During this time almost all the impor- tant places suitable for agriculture and commerce in southern Italy v/ere occupied by the Greeks. -44- How you know that these two centers of civilization in Italy ■were very important for the development of the Indo-European tribes not belonging to the Greel<: stock v/hich settled in Italy, those which v;e call Italic tribes. They v;ere akin to the Celts (the Gauls) and the Germans. They probably came from the Danube across the Alps and settled down first in northern Italy and after- v;ards propagated all through the peninsula of the Apennines. Now they were cut off fcr a long time from the sea by the Etruscans and by the Greeks and by some Illyrian tribes v/hich still exist on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, as the eastern shore of Italy was almost entirely occupied by peoples of the Illyrian stock. So the Italians were confined to tlie mountainous lands on the Apennines, and the only cutlet thej had to the sea was at the mouth of the Tiber v.'here one branch of the Italians, the Latins, had patiently built up civilized life and a state life v/hich constantly developed and took more and more firm hold. Y/hat is the explanation of the fact that this whole place v;as left to the Latins by the Etruscans and the Greeks? The mouth of the Tiber is not a very attractive place. It 7;as infected by malaria, and it is very hard to cultivate. The soil is very cal- citrant and not very v/ell adapted to the efforts of agriculture. On the other hand, Latium was a kind of neutral zone between the two rivals - Etruria and the Greelc Italy, - v/here both the Etruscans and Greeks had their commercial interests. That expl'^ins vtoy the early civilization and the city life among the Italians first developed in Lativuia. I need not explain at length hov; civilized state life developed in Latium and how gradually the leading cities which founded a colony nea.r the mouth of the Tiber, the future Rome, were obliged to cede the supremacy to Rome and how Rome developed into a leader of the Latin cities and, so to speak, the president of the league of the Latin cities, the leader in war and peace. Ix took some centuries to transform P.ome from the refuge 6f shepherds ajid a fortress of Latiujn, a bridgehead against Etruria, into a large and flourishing city. Suffice it to say- that Rome v;as the last in Latium to develop on the lines of city life. The Latin cities underwent the same process earlier, and that was due tc the influence of city life coming both from Greece and from Etruria. So the first place for the development of city life in Italy, along with southern Italy and Etruria, v/as X^tium_ v/ith many comparatively big cities of v;hich many still exist. For example, Plascab (Tusculum) and Tivoli (Tibur). The second place for the development of city life in Italy under Greelc influence and affecting another tribe, was Jampaniaj. one of the best parts of Italy nov/. You knov/ that the Itallahs say "Bee Naples and die." That is the best land, very rich indeed - rich in v/ine, rich in olive trees, rich in crops, having everytliing which anybody may v;ish. It has a wonderful climate. This best place attracted, of course, from time immemorial all the leading -45- peoples in Italy. First, the Greeks, who created here some flourishing cities like Naples and Cyme- Afterwards the Etruscans, during their domination in Italy in the 7th and 6th centuries, tried to seize this land and huild a city which v/as called Capua. Afterwards the Samnites, who were under the influence of the Greeks, for centuries trading with them and imitating their civilization, got organized and rich, and of course in their mountains there were not as many opportunities as in Campania., 30 they tried to occupy Campania. The natives of Campania had "been under the strong* influence of the Greeks from time immemorial and they "began to build flourishing cities as early as the 5th century B.C. and prohahly earlier. One of the most splendid examples of these cities in Campania v/as Pompeii, a city which was the center of the native population. It was later influenced "by the Greeks and was Hellenized and became a city of the Greek type. Afterwards it was for some time taken by the Etruscans and developed by the Etruscan influence, but that was for a very short time indeed. Finally, it became for a long time a city of Hellenized Saronites. Cities like Pompeii v;ere many. ITola, Stabiae and Herculaneuia are the cities best known to us because they were covered by ashes during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D< So Campania was the second place of development of city life, and under this influence city life was propagated everywhere in Italy. Hovi you knov7 the destinies of Rome. Rome first succeeded in uniting around herself the cities and the peoples of Latium; afterwards she gained strength in the conflict with the mountainous peoples in her nearest neighborhood and succeeded in conquering them; gradually she conquered one part of the Etruscan territory after another; finally, after very long and very important wars with tlie Samnites, Rome succeeded in uniting under her sway all of central Italy. After that Rome began political relations witi' the Greek cities and asked the Greek cities to obey her and to enter into the Roman alliance, as she called her form of political domination. Italian Greece tried to refuse to enter such an alliance, but was conquered and was obliged to enter into the Latin-Roman alliance by the middle of the 3rd century B.C., at the time v/hen Greece was in her Hellenistic period. At this period Italy v/as united under the leadership of Rome, and that is a very important topic and very important feature, because Rome was a city state, just a city-state of the Greek type. The Greek influence lasted too long in Italy not to achieve in Italy the city state. The Latin cities which formed the earlier alliance of Rome were all city states. The Etruscan_ cities were another group of city states on the Greek model and' the cities of Campania were again organized as Greek city states. So the leading form of political existence in Italy was an alliance under the xeadership of Rome of scores of city states. But the city states did not occupy all of the territory of Italy, llany places in the mountains and in the olains remained outside of city territories and ot tne form of life of the cit^ states. Rome accepted^enti^rely-Jtixe-Uxeeis: idea of civilization, i'^.e., tliat ei^Fiir^ednn^e was possible only ^TT^-g -for mof a city state; and so Rome, when it bec ame possible -46- for_Jier^_began to develop_ city life consciously in Italy, with the^urpos^e^'anarprinciple of impiantins new and more nev/ cities all over Italy, One of the most important features of the establishment of these cities on the Greek model was the sending out of colonies. One colony after another was sent out by Rome to different places of Italy - many of them were situated on the shores, in the mountains, and ever^^where. The leading feature of these colonies was not the same as the leading feature of the Greek colonies. The Greek colonies were just new city states created by the Greeks, independent of their mother country, and having only the importance of being nev; centers of civilized tnd political life. For Rome a colony v/ as a different thing. ForRome_jthe__colonv was the propa- gation of Rome t hrough Italy. ancT of Roman domination. The colonies were not independent city etates ; they were branches of the Roman city states - branches, living bodies, taken off the body of Rome and implanted for the purposes of the Roman state in different parts of Italy. Preservation, therefore, meant military organization for a long^ period. They were more of the nature of fortified places and of military camps than new centers of agricultural or commercial life. But, of course, the Roman state was a peasant state. The Roman state v;as founded on the peasants of the plains of Latium, v/ho transformed the treacherous soiD i-^to fertile and pleasant land by m.eans of hard work. The Roman army was an army of the peasants and the leaders v;ere leaders of armed peasa.nts . That means that tJie_cplony was not only a part of th e Roman citizen army, it v/as at the same time a branch ■- trf^ "e Roman "agricultural cominunity, concuering the land as well ^ meajis _]oi3_arms as by means of plows in these communities. An implantation of the Roman colonies meant alvrays the creation of a nev; agricultural territory by the Roman peasant soldiers- That is very important because it will show hov/ afterv/ards Rome implanted the same kind of new cities outside of Italy in the provinces and especially in the v/estern provinces. That was one means of propa- gating city life in Italy. The second was sending out, not colonies of Roman citizens only, but colonies of the allies who gathered around Rome, first, the Latin and afteiv;ards the Italian allies. They sent out colonies of the same type and for the same purpose. And gradually Rome tried also to implant into the life of the tribes, which did not know anything of city life, the necessity of going over to a city life; because Rome treated only v/ith groups that -vere organized, which had the same form as Rome had, I mean the form of a city states With the tribes no real alliance v/as possible. That was possible only between one city state, which was Borne, with another city state. Therefore, the existing city states of Etruria, Greece, and Campania were accepted in the alliance without difficulty. But there v/ere many tribes in central and northern Italy populated by Italian and Gaulic tribes v/here city life was practically unknown. Of course, the germs of city life v/ere imported into these territories with the Latin and Roman colonies. -47- These germs began to develop, smd these Roman colonies v;ere gradually imitated by the native population, and territories populated by the tribes were gradually transformed into cities v/ith territories of the same type and of the same structure as the Latin city states, the Greek and the Etruscan ones. This happened in the 4th - 2nd centuries, B.C. Gradually Italy became what it is now, a conglomerate of cities, which means city states. At the same time Rome as the leading city began to develop, not into one of the allied city states, but into the capital of Italy. That is the fourth period in the life of Rome. First, you have a group of herdsmen; afterwards a city, one of the Latin city states; the third was the leadership among the Latin city states; and the fourth period was the leadership of Italy, Rome being the capital of Italy v/here political life of Italy was concentrated and where the great part of the commercial and social life was also concentrated; a very interesting period in the development of Rome. Rome as the ca.pital of Italy had more or less the same aspect as Athens in Greece. Just the same. Athens was the center of a large maritime alliance; Rome was the center of an enormous and very strong alliance of land states, but both v;ere centers of a state v;here the constituent parts v;ere city states just the same as the leading city was. This allia.nce was a mighty and a very important factor in the development of the ancient world. You know the story. I have not to tell you the story or the history of Rome during the seconc century BjC, the first century, etc. You know that Italy under the leaderwhip of Rome became one of the most influential members of the balance of power of the Hellenistic period. Being an influential member of this society of nations, Rome, of course, being the most powerful of them and having a better constitution based not on' an absolutistic monarchy, but on republican princip3 es , had of course the possibility of dictating her conditions to the other parts of this society of ancient nations. Now of course the Greeks were not prepared to obey Rome. They were too proud of their civilization and too much convinced that they were stronger than Rome. That v;as the reason why one leading Hellenistic power after another tried to attack Italy and tried to make Italy serve the purposes of this lea.ding state. First Macedonia; afterwards Syria; Egypt never tried it, because it knev/ how strong Rome was. In the course of these wars Asia Minor, the Balkan peninsula and the Near East gr.adually became dependent on Italy and at the same time Roman civilization proceeded. Well toward the end of the first century B.C. v;as formed the Roman Empire. The result was that Rome v;as the only leading empire in the v;orld and Rome commanded all that v;as the civilized mankind of the ancient v/orld. You know that Italy formed the center and the leading part of this enormous and mighty empire, and that the other parts of the world were divided into provinces of Rome. It is more or less the same constitution as the constitution of the British Empire, - more or less the same. You have a central, but thickly populated land with a good constitution, with a national unity and -48- dependencies more or less civilized, seme entirely civilized, some not civilized, and some getting civilized gradually. Iirst oi axx you have in Italy herself a central land populated by Roman citizens. Outside of Italy there were groups of Roman citizens, those sent out to form colonies, and trading people m allied • oitieo and the provinces, but as a rule the Roman cibizenship •was concfntTFitpd in Italy. The first province annexed to Rome was Sicily, followed by Sardinia and Corsica; the next v;as Spam, next Africa, later on a large part of Gaul; in the Orient the first was Itacedonia, and the next was Asia; and later one land after another was annexed to this net of Roman provinces until the boundaries almost entirely coincided with the boundaries of the civilized world. The only exception was the Orient, where the neighbor of Rome, the ancient Persian Empire (the Snpire of Parthia), v/as a civilized and thriving state. In southern Russia Rome in- fluenced the Greek cities of the shores, but it never possessed and never had any influence on central Russia or even on the steppes of southern Russia. The Balkan peninsula was almost en- tirely occupied and was divided from the Germans by the River Danube, the Rliine forming the northeastern boundary between the Romanized provinces of Gaul, and the Germanic tribes. In Spain and Britain the Roman Empire bordered the ocean, and in Africa, the desert. Now, viiat is important for us to know and V7hat I v;ill try to explain next time, is hov/ Rome dealt vath these new provinces with no city life, except in the Oriental provinces and in some places on the shores of the Mediterranean in the Test. About the second century A-D- , almost all the western provinces and large tracts of land in the Orient had the same aspect as Italy in the third and second centuries B.C. They v;ere transformed into lands where the cities were the dominating social, economic and political features. That led to the results of which I spoke at the beginning of my lecture, that is, the expansion resulting malcing Prance, Britain and Germa^ny lands of cities; and it led at the same time to the result given in my first lecture, the contrast of city and country population. In my last lecture I will try to explain the features of city life in the Roman Empire, beginning _ with the first century B.C.; and I will try to show how the leaaing countries were transformed into countries v;here cities were the leading social element* -49- Lecture 5, February 28, 1922. The Roman Empire - (Concluded) I have told you how the city of Rome gradually became first the center of a league of cities in the small place called Latium; how gradually Latium, headed by Rome, became the center of Italy, transforming Italy into another league of cities and tribes; how Rome transformed gradually the tribes of this league into as many cities again. The next stage in the development of Rome is Rome as one of the powers which formed the balance of pov/er during the Hellenistic period. I explained tc you also hov; Rome, being the mightiest member of this league of nations of the Hellenistic period, began to dominate the balance of pov;er and transformed what v/as the balance of power into a Roman Empire of which the center v/as the city of Rome. It was another Athenian league, but built on a sounder basis than the league of Athens was. You know, and I do not have to explain to you here - it would take too much time - that internal troubles, civil and social war in Italy, herself during the first century B.C., did not check the domination of Rome, but transformed the internal structure of Rome, which was not adapted to the nev>; conditions, into a new form of political , constitution v;hich was a compromise betv/een the oriental monarchyf and the Greek city state, just as the Hellenistic monarchies were such a compromise. But even in the new form, Rome remained the leading city of the new world empire of Rome; and it is not for nothing that the new world empire was not called the Italian Empire. never would anybody think of speaking of an Italian world pov/er. Th^X_S£Oi^§-_?^^out_jthe^^oinajis_ ^^ being the masters of the worlc and of the cit y of Rorae a s being the mistress, the ruler, the dominate r ~ wITIch~was"~o b e ye d e ve rywhef e^ by everyone. That is interesting again, sliov/ing you the leading part which v/as played by a city in this transformation of the ancient v/orld into a world empire; it v/as achieved by the city state and not by an oriental monarchy or some league of cities. One city did achieve the v/orld empire. From the point of view of the history of cities, it is interesting to see how, during the centuries of development, the city of Rome has gradually assumed nevi forms of city life. First a modest refuge of shepherds, the city of Rome became afterwards one of the cities of Latium, one of the oppida, a kind of intermediary between real city and a fortified refuge; how under the Etruscans the city of Rome assumed m.ore and more the forms of a city state; how afterwards the city became a kind of capital of Latium and later on the capital of Italy; and how at that time it assumed almost the same forms that were assumed by Athens during the domination of Athens in Greece. But gradually Rome surpassed, so to speak, Athens. Rome was no longer the center of an Italian league of cities as Athens v/as the center of a Greek league of cities. It became the ■ capital of the civilized world and, as you know, by means of a social and of a civil v/ar, Rome was transformed into a monarchial capital -50- of just the same type as Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum and the ruling cities of Macedonia. It^ became the cent^ oj a- c ivilized statewith a Greek civil izationT^andTaTThe same tim~e a center of a large empire; and more than the cities of the Hellenistic world, it becajb-ejthe ruling city of tiie civilized world. Now, that is a very interesting development in the form of city life at Rome. Rome was growing chaotically, as Athens had been, with the center, the Forum and the Capitol, and with one "block of houses grovdng up after another. "Without any system, only according to the topographical features of the city of Rome- It is the same growth as, for example, the grov/th of most of the medieval cities and, for example, tiie growth of Paris and London. It was chaotic and without system, and presented very fev/ opportu- nities for comfortable living for the population of Rome. If you read the writers of the Roman Empire, if you read their description of the city of Rome, you will find that the city of Rome was really very uncomfortable, dirty, and not a good place to live in. Of course, the Republic had already provided Rome with one of the best water supplies which existed in the ancient world. This was comparatively easy to do because the neighborhood of Rome has very good water; and nowadays modern Rome is very rich in good water because about three-fourths of the aqueducts built for the Roman Empire are still used. Almost no new aqueducts have been built by the popes and by Italian kings. They almost alv/ays rebuilt the ancient aqueducts of the Romans, and rebuilt them only partly, and there are some still that are cut of use. Rome has alv/ays been one of the richest cities in water in the European world. But except for the water very little v/as done for the city of Rome, from the point of view of municipal organization, during the tijne of the Republic. /\^<-c^=^ Now the reason for it was the speculation of the Roman capilalists- Rome was a center of the econom-ic and political life of the world. No wonder, then, that capitalism was cuickly developing in Rome, and one of the most successful speculations was that in the city land of Rome and in buildings, larij;e buildings, of the type of your skyscrapers. This was caused mostly by the fSct which I already emphasized in speaking of the Hellenistic cities. The transportation conditions v/ere very bad in the ancient world. You had only your own feet to get about on. The over- crov/ding of the cities was a certain result, so that in the best organized cities people were not allowed to drive in a carriage or to ride on horse back. Carriages were not permitted to circulate in the city, except carts for bringing in food stuffs, which were allowed in the city at night. Orders prescribed in Hellenistic municipal lav;s were similar to a very interesting municipal law . published by Julius Caesar - Lex Julia Municipalis. This law we can still read. TlT^sTiows many parailels to corresponding lav/s which we know from Alexandria and Pergam\im, the first a new dis- covery, a roll of papyrus, bought by the Germans in Egypt. In the descriptions of the municipal law of Pergamum Vv-e find orders saying hov/ to build the city as such, how to manage the streets, - 51 - how to keep them clean. Everything is prescribed in this law of Pergamiim, and it is just the same in the lav; of Alexandria. "We suppose that such lav/s existed for every city of the ancient Hellenistic world, and just such a lav/ was published by Julius Caesar and voted by the popular assembly of Rome, not only for Rone, but for all the cities of Italy. This law dealt exclusively with municipal matters. It tries to remedy all the evils which existed in the city of Rome, and one of tlie paragraphs dealt with the circulation of people in Rome. You could circulate only on foot. The most important place in the city of Rome was the Forum vath its temples, public buildings, large markets, rich shops, its exchange houses so to speak, the bourse if we use the French v/ord, v/here all the transactions were carried out, and very important transactions they v;ere, indeed. All were concentrated in one place and everybody tried to live as near as possible to the center of business, political and religious life, and of course all the wards near the center were occupied. At the same time the capitalists bou^t for enormous sums large places for building their palaces, so that a good piece of land was taken out of use for the common people for the use of the capitalists. So in the time of the Republic the hill of the Palatine, which_ v/as just near the Forum and accordingly in the center of the city, v/as entirely occupied by houses built by Roman ca.pitalists . Here lived, for example, Cicero and many great persons of the same type. That means, you understand, that in the rest of the city there was an overcrov/ding by the enormous population attracted to the center of the city, and this gave rise to speculation. The matter is explained in an old but very good book of one of the best historians of the ancient v;orld, Robert Ptthlmann, v;ho v/as a professor of ancient history in Munich. He wrote a book Die Uberbevttlkerung der antiken St^dte, (The Overpopulation of the Ancient Cities) . It gives a very interesting picture, v/hich should be nov/ completed in - the light of the nev; discoveries and in the light of parallels existing between Rome and the Hellenistic capitals. TThen PShlman v/rote in the 70 's of the last century, not much v/as knov/n about • the Hellenistic capitals, but from the economic and social point of viev/ it is a very interesting and a very good study. As I ha.ve already pointed out, this situation led to speculation. Speculators, large capitalists, - for example, ^the famous Crassus, a member of the triumvirate v/ith Caesar and Pompey,- v/ould buy large parcels of land, would build one enormous sky- scraper after another. I speak of skyscrapers, and I shall insist on calling them so, because from the point of viev/ of the Roms.n technique, so far as it was possible to build v/ithout steam engines and electricity, it was just the most that could be achieved in building houses. Houses of six stories were quite comir.on in Rome. This does not mean the same thing as in flat cities, because Rome was situated on "seven hills," as you know, so that sometimes the upper part of the house whs two stories and the lower part of the house was six stories high. Such houses of many stories are -52- descri"bed by many ancient v/riters, and catastrophes happened very often. These catastrophes v/ere caused by inundations of the Tiber V7hich still overflows Rome very often in the winter and spring. Now, of course, it does harm to the lov/er part of the city only, but in ancient times, v/hen the course of the Tiber was not yet regulated, the floods of the Tiber were a great danger, and especially so because the houses were very badly built. Just from the point of view of speculation they were built as cheaply as possible, and of as bad material as was possible for the Romans. Although they built brick houses, these were as cheap as possible and v;ithout deep foundations. So it happened very often that during the flood many houses collapsed, v;ith all the people in them. And it happened very often, too, that fires broke out. You all knov/ about the fire in the tine of Nero, who v/as accused of having kindled it, - Hero then accused the Christians. I do not know vrho v/as guilty. Probably neither Kero nor the Christians. _ Fires were frequent in Rome. Such was the city of Rone - chaotic in its growth, overcrov/ded and concentrated on a small strip of land, not organized except for the central parts of tJae city, and even the central parts of the city were entirely dependent upon the liberal gifts of the leading citizens of Rome. Nov/, you know that later on, because of the civil and of the social wars, Rome was transformed into a kind of Hellenistic monarchy and became the capital of a large state. The activity of the emporers in transforming Rome into a Hellenistic capital, in rebuilding Rome on nev; lines, in transforming Athens into Alexandria, is remarkable indeed. Augustus entirely ^hanged the aspects of the central parts of the city of Rome. He built it on new lines v/ith beautiful buildings, buying up very many houses. His successors bought one block of houses after another and built •^ew_aji d beau tiful buildings. But v.liat is interesting is the fact that the result was an entirely new city of the type which is characteristic of the Hellenistic cities of the Greek worldi that is, a Greek city v/ith all the parts necessary for a Greek city. You remember that the Hellenistic capital was a combination of buildings necessary for the political, social, economic and religious life of the population, with a residence, the palace of the ruling man. After the civil wars Rome also got her master, her ruling man: princeps of emperor, as you like. Therefore, along with an embellished city with improved hygienic conditions intended to serve the needs of the population a large part of the city v;as covered by the large residence of the Emperor, occupying an entire hill of the city of Rome, the Palatine. So that the Palatine, in Latin palatium , became the name for palaces in all languages, except in Russia and the Slavic countries. In the Slavonic languages it is different; the nsjue for the palace is _ dvorets. My parallel with Moscow as the last center of the oriental world is here complete. Because dvorets means "the court," i.e., the court of an oriental king. However, there was one - and a very interesting - difference between the cities of the Greek world and the city of Rome; even between the capitals of the -53- Hellenistic monarchies and the city of Rome. The general type of the Greek cities and of Roincji was almost the same, the leading temple on the Capitol, the rrxiricet place and the center of public life - the Forum; a beautiful nouse for the senate, large houses for shows, theatres, amphitheatres. But there was one diiference. You rememher that in Pf.rgarLnim, in Alexardria, even in the small cities like Delos, along -with the tuildjngs for the public liie an enormous part was iDlayed by the buildii-^gs for the eaucation of young people. Large buildings like cur universities you find m a2inost all Hellenistic cities. But in Rome ar?d the cities of tue Roman Empire they disappeared and their place was taken by public baths, not only for sv/.iiiming and bathing purposes, not only for the health of the body, but for other purposes also. The iirst thing that impresses you in Rome is the enorr.ious ci ze of the ruins of the bath- It is only the ruins which exist. Take for eicample the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. The place which was occupied first by this bath of Diocletian is now occupied by one part of the building of the central railway station of Rome, by a large public place v/ith a wonderful modern fountain, by many houses and shops, by the largest museum of aritiquities m Rome built into the ruins of the bath, and by one of the most beautiful churches of Rome rebuilt by Michael Angelo, which had been one of the rooms of the bath. All this formed fornerly only one large building. The therr .ae of Diocletian is an example of what were the other t herr.?- 8 built for the population of Rome. They were not only places for a sv;im or a "bath. The Romans came to these pla.ces just as vie come to clubs. As you come to a fraternity or to your clubs, so the population of Rome v;ent to these baths. They were furnislied v/ith restaurants, libraj'ies, reading rooms, open places for sports, etc. You could find everything here in tlie enormous baths. These baths replaced the educational institutions of the Hellenistic cities. The schools in Rome as late as the second century A.D. were entirely a private affair and were never cared for by the government. This is just the opposite of the rules prevailing in the Hellenistic cities. Such was Rome! You see already that the conditions were almost the same as the conditions in sorae of the modern cities. And the best parallel I know is, of course, Paris. An ancient city groY.ang up from a tribal center, growing up gradually, • • - - " ■ - ■ - - ^^ I t iinovy 11 IX, nas not sxiii a oix oi "cms importance. xnis chaotically growing city with v/onderful buildings like the palace of the kings, the market place near the Bastille, has just the same features as Rome before the Empire. But Paris, as you know, has had its Empire, too. Under ITapoleon III it v/as entirely re- built, "Haussmannized," as they say. It is an odd, but a good word- "What Napoleon and Haussmann did for Paris v/ith the wonderful streets, parks, and boulevards, was done for Rome by Augustus- Of course, Napoleon took only the paths devised to him by the Roman emperors- Napoleon III was dealing only with something prepared -54- "by Hapoleon I. He only Haussmannized Paris- In Rome you will see hoY7 thorough was the v/ori: of rebuilding. Such was the city of Rome'. No-.v, the Roman Enapire existed for centuries and centuries, and I should say it was never destroyed. It never ceased to exist. Many imagine, of course, that the barbarians destroyed the Roman Empire, but that was never a fact, Rome was never destroyed. Rome continued to exist. Of course, it was after a time no longer the political center of the -world, but it was still the leading spiritual center, and the pope was just the successor of the Roman emperors. And, of course, from the political point of viev; the idea of a sacred empire shifted to France, Spain, etc., but it never died. And about the same time, in the second capital of the Roman world, Byzantium, the name of Rome existed and the population of the Byzantine Empire called themselves Romans; and so you see the whole organization of the Rpman Empire existed as long as the 15th century. So the Roman Empire existed for centuries and centuries. The most brilliant time of the Roman Erapirc was the first three centuries, especially the first and second A.D. The most brilliant work of the Romans v/as done during these first two centuries. From the point of view v/hich interests us v/hat v/as done by Rome as an empire ruled by one man v;ho was gradually transformed from ^ leader of the citizens of Rome to a tyrant whose power y/as based on military force and then into a real monpjrch of the oriental type? T,lhat was done by these men from the point of view which interests us? I should say they did just the same as the Hellenis- tic raonarchs before. :them. They tried to transform large tracts of imperial land into territories of cities, and the greatest work Dn this respect was done by them in the western provinces. The eastern provinces were already partly transformed into large territories of cities, and were already populated by cities built one after another by the Hellenistic rulers in Asia Minor, in Syria, in central Asia, even in Egypt. And Greece v;as , of course, a land of cities from time immemorial. Italy was also a land of cities. Almost no territories which did not belong to the cities existed in Italy; but the rest of the western world still lived in conditions v;hich had nothing to do with the Greek city state. Tribal life was the leading life in western Europe and remained the leading life in Germany and in the Slavonic world. But the Celtic world and the Thracian v/orld - France, Spain, England, ?-nd what was before the war Austria, v/ere transformed by the Romrjis on the sane lines that were followed by the Hellenistic monarchs for the Orient. The western provinces became lands of cities as well. Take, for example, Africa, v;here only a fev; Phoenician cities exited on the shores before the Roman dominion. After one century of the Roman rule in Africa it was covered with scores, hundreds of Roman cities, and the type of these cities v/as the same as that of the Italian and Greek cities. It offered to the inhabitants the most comfortable and hygienic life. The scientific devices oi -55- planning the cities, of building public and private buildings were carried out in all the cities. Nov/, let me descri'be to you the main lines on v/hich this work of implanting the Roman city in Western Europe was done. The most important carriers of city life were the soldiers, the Roman legions. First they built camps. Nov; the camp was the center of life for the soldiers only, but the soldiers, as soon as the camps became permanent fortifications to protect the frontier, attracted to the camp some shopkeepers, artisans, etc. etc., who settled down near the camp. Some of the soldiers married or took concubines and built for them houses in the neighborhood. In this way a city was growing un around the camp, the so-called "canabac.'.' They grew richer and' richer, larger and larger. They needed a territory to support their population. The Roman emperors granted them the territory and gradually transformed them into real cities, having all the rights of a city, i.e., their own magis- trates, their own finances, self-government, etc, like the different types of the Italian cities. The second type was that of a city formed as the administrative and economic center of the tribes in Gaul and in Spain. These tribsB had ali/ays some refuges and some market places in a well protected spot. These refuges were situated (and there are many exca.-ated by the French) almost always en tops of hills and raoun- taiv.s. Now the Roman emperors created such a life that peace reigned all over the provinces of western Europe. The legions on the frontier, building up cities, protected by this civilized zone the lands of Prance and Spain against attacks from the outside. The same was done in Britain in building the well-known armed frontier, the British Wall. So under the protection of the troops, of course, there was no need any more to climb a steep hill to get your shopping done, and there was no more reason to look for a refuge, because life v/as safe. So these eagle nests came down to the plain, and regular cities were built under the incentive given by the Roman government, which insisted on having one or \ more political centers for each tribe or nation- One of the cities v/as Paris, the center of the tribe of Parisii, and most of the names of the leading cities in Prance are names of tribes. As you see, gradually the tribes got a political center, and this center grew into a large and civilized well built city under the I protection and with the help of the Roman emperors and the Roman governments. In this way Spain and Prance and Britain also became territories of towns, also territories of cities. Of course, the territories were very large indeed, because the tribes had very large territories, so that they formed a kind of little state. Another type of policy was assumed by the Romans in Africa, \ according to the circumstances which prevailed in this land- I \ have spoken of this already. This land of prairies and of nomadic shepherds, still now to a great extent a land of the same type, was, by the constant efforts of the Romans, transformed into a flourish- ing conglomerate of cities. I will illustrate all that I have said -56- about these two types of cities next time. In v;estern Europe and in Africa I v/ill show you graphicallj'' what I mean by all this inplantation of city life in the countries which did not knov/ anything about cities. Before finishing my subject I will drav/ some coriclusions. Of course, my characterization of the economic and social conditions connected v;ith the cities in the ancient v;orld gave you an im- / pression - and a right one, which I tried to produce, - that the ancient civilization and the ancient state were mostly city civilization and city state. Such is the aspect, certainly, of the Greek states, and, no doubt, of the Italian, of the Roman state. But you must not forget th„t that was only the upper life. That beneath, you have another type of life, v/hich was not interest- ing for the ancient writers, which v/as just the basis, the foundation of the economic and social life, but v/as at the same time a type of life for v/hich nobody cared, because everybody cared for the cities. Nobody cared for the country population on which the cities grev; up and which formed, so to speak, the ruler of city life. Now, part of these lands were populated by peasants, part by serfs who belonged to city territories and formed the foundation of Lhe city territories. But you remember that the \ oriental countries, large as they were, much larger than Greece \ and Italy, never knew a real city life. The political life, the social and the economic life of the oriental countries was always based on the main rural population, on the population of the peasants, and the expression of this idea that the peasants formed just the center and the main foundation of the state was the absolutistic monarchy of the oriental life. In Greece and in Italy the city territories, the leagues of cities dominated from the very beginning. During the Hellenistic and the Roman period, cities of the Greek types were implanted in the Oriental lands. It seemed as if the Orient too was gradually transformed into a complex of city- territories, but it v/as not so. The cities covered perhaps one-hundredth of the large spaces of the Orient, As before, the Orient remained the land of peasants and the land of monarchs when the Roman emperors v;ere gretted by the Orient aa the successors of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian kings. Uow, in the 'Z^est you have almost the same thing. Hot the \ small territories, v;ith cities which grev/ up organically out of _^\ the territories, as in Greece and Italy. Nol You have artificial cities with enormous territories populated by people not taken in by the ancient Greek and Roman civilization, people who remained just the same peasants and serfs that they were before the Roman domination. If you talce the whole of the Roman Erapire you will see that except Greece and Italy the cities form the upper layer only; but they are very talkative, everybody sees them. Peasants are silent, nobody mentions them, except, you see, en passant; but they form the masses of the population and they see that the cities are exploiting them, living at their expense. And this feeling of which I spoke, the feeling of a kind of contrast between -57- the cities and the country v;as growing, as time passed, in the Ro-nan Empire, where of course the emperors based their power almost exclusively on the city. Nothing explains why in the third century comes a social upheaval that almost destroys the Roman Empire. Scores of emperors proclaimed by the troops fight each other in a political hell for no reason. 7*iy was it? I say it was the fight of the country population, which formed at that time the armies of the Roman Ei-npire, against the cities. That was the fight of the country population against the city populati on. The fight of the peasants against the men of the city who exploited them and lived at their expense. And if the Roman Empire in the third and fourth century under Diocletian and Constantine was transformed again into an oriental empire "built upon the sane foundations as the ancient Oriental empires, it was because the emperors realized this state of things and founded their pov;er again on large masses of the peasants, degrading the city population to the level of the country population, making out of them the same servants of the state as the peasants always were in the Oriental v/orld. Such is the history of the cities in the ancient world. Of course, this is only a brief sketch. It requires more time than is at my disposal to give a good idea of the conditions, but I hope you will retain from my lectures one main point: How important it is for the evolution of the modern world to know the development of the cities in the ancient world. -58- INSTITUTE 'FO'R ?£SEARCK IN LAITD ECOUOEICS URBAN LAND ECONOMICS Urban Land in the Middle Ages by Mary L. Shine, Ph. D. Institute for Research in Ls.nd Economics. "UNDER ALL, THE LAND" "My own conviction has long been that the land question far transcends any re- stricted field of economics and that it is fundamental to national survival and national v/elfare. It is truly a problem calling for statesiaanship of the broad- est type." - Professor Erank A. Fetter. TABLE OF COETEIITS URBAIT LAM) IN TIS MIDDLE AGES by MARY L. SHIIIE Introduction. I. Rise of the medieval towns. A. Y.lien? B. "V/hy? C 7;hat/? D. How? E. Importance as trading units. F. Population. IL Land selection. A. Site. 1. C^ualifications . 2. Possi"ble sites. 3. Meaning of "advantages for trade." B. Amount of land selected. C. Selection of land inside the town. 1 . Publ i c . 2. Private. m. Ownership of land. A. Private. 1. Original. 2. Burgage tenure. 3. Pirina bursii . 4. Courts. 5. Explanations of 6. Landed property 3. Public. c. Co EX. ion. rise of burgage tenure, qualification for citizenship. IV. Land Utilization. A. Common lands. B. Private lands. 1. Agriculture. 2. Residence. 3. Commerce and manufacture. C. Public lands. V. Public Services and Public Utilities. A. Street paving. B. Street cleaning - sewerage. C. Water supply. 1). Street lighting. E. Police protection, p. Firs' protection. G-. Other services. -60- VI- Regulation of the Use of Land. A. Public land. 3. Private land. VII. Taxation, Land Values, Real Estate Business. A. Taxation. B • Land Values . C. Real Estate Business. Conclusion - Transition. • 61- UKBAIT LAIID liT THE MIDDLE AGES Introduction In discussing the antagonism "bet'-veen city and country in one of his early lectures. Professor Rostovtzeff told us that, beginning with the third century of our era, country began to over- v/helm city. The Roman cities v;ere already declining v/hen the barbarian hordes swept over Europe, inundating the Roman provinces, which have been described as conglomerations of cities, with a population v;hich had not reached that stage of civilization which expresses itself in city life. The life they preferred and con- tinued to maintain v/as a country life v/ith the village as its most concentrated unit. However they were not maliciously destructive and had no desire to destroy a civilization that they rather admired v/ithout wishing to adopt it. Cities that fought their advance were con- quered in conflicts that were destructive, but cities that offered no resistance were allowed to continue their existence, and the ruins found in them to-day are often the result of later wars between factions of their own citizens or of other v/ars in which the cities took part, and not the work of the barbarian invasions of the fourth, fifth, and later centuries. Some of these surviving Roman cities continued an unbroken city life, but many of them fell into more or less decay. There has been much controversy among historians as to whether medieval cities on the sites of old Roman towns were survivors or v/hether the Roman towns had died and had been born anew about the year 1000. The lacl: of contemporary accounts of the towns from the seventh to the eleventh century makes the question one that cannot be solved.-- Some of the Italian cities, undoubtedly, had a con- tinuous city life. Some of the cities of Roman Gaul and the Roman cities of the Rhine continued to exist as cities^ among them'Paris, Bordeaux, Strassburg, Cologne and Mayence,'^) and also some of the towns and camps of Roman Britain."^) It is probable that the thing v;hich survived in these places was the independent economic life, and that their pov/ers of municipal self governEient v/ere swept awa3?-,4) f^y- there does not appear to have been a sur- vival of Roman municipal institutions to any great extent. Luchaire feels that the Roman origin of the municipal institutions of the French communes has not been proved for even the southern part of Prance - the most highly Romanized section.^) Many of the old Roman cities that survived declined in importance, in population, and in area; and when they emerge in ^•' Achilla Luchaire, Communes Prancajses a I'e-Qogue des Capetians ■Directs (Paris, 1911), p. 11. 2) William Cunningham, T/estern Civilization (2 vols-, Cambridge, 1898-1900), II, 58. 2) J.S. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages (Fev? V York, 1884), pp. 102-103. ^' Cunninghajn, Western Civilization , II, 58. 5) Luchaire, 12, 13. -62- the Middle Ages we find that .a small portion of the Roman city has been walled and fortified by a little group of people and has ■become a medieval town not at all comparatle in importance, in size, or in population \rith the Roman city that had "been on the spot in former times. 6) I - Rise of the medieval tov'ns . T/lien ? Our first records of the medieval tovnis are in the eleventh century. Pirenne says that the first mention of burgesses (or townsmen) in the Emx)ire was concerned v/ith the tov,-n of Huy in the Bishopric of Liege in 1065.'^) In the tv/elfth century the boroughs, or towns, lirst began to have an independent municipal history. 8) Y/hy ? v;hy did the towns appear at this time? It is probable that the grouping together of people in one place had begun much earlier. The barbarians of the earlier centuries were no longer barbarians, and civilization was developing - the grov/th of cities is, as Professor Rostovtzeff has shown, a necessary condition of civilization. The softening of the rough life of the barbarians, the rise in their standards of living, the demand for commodities, brougjtit about a need for tradfe^ and the widening of acquaintance with commodities for consumption that was the result of the movement of people about Europe and toward the East during the Crusades, gave speed to the development of commerce that had already begun. Cunningham says, " It may be impossible to say viiether trade called forth a town, or whether the presence of a town gave the opportunity for trade,. ••• the existence of a town and the existence of internal trade are inseparable; vthe progress of one w^ould stimulate the increase cf the otlier."^^ In order to understand the rise of a town it is necessary to understand the system of land tenure which prevailed in the Middle .Ages. TOien the barbarian conquerors settled down, the land in these places was taken into possession, and parcelled out in tracts of various sizes among the chief men on condition that they return far it certain military service. This military service, in the case of a great noble possessed of one or more large tracts of land, was not his personal service alone, but the service of so many knights fully equipped, the nuraber being proportioned to the amount of land held. The lords managed this by letting out portions of the land they held to others with the agreement that ^^ y;.J. Ashley, Su rveys Historic and Economic (London, 1900) p. 179 (abstracting Plach, Qrig;ines de I'ancienne France) . 7) Pirenne, Pi nan t , p. 18, quoted in Green, Town Life, I, II. 8) Mrs. iT.R. Green, Tov/n Life in the F ifteenth Century (2 vols ¥ew York, 1894) I, 11. ^' v^unningham, Y/estern Civilization , II, 56, 57. -62- these sub-tenants or sub-vassals should provide a certain number of men for tlie military force required of the great noble or tenant in chief. The sub- tenants sometimes repeated this process. This whole systeia ox Is.nd tenure 77as called the feudal sys ^em. None of these men worked the land they held. The work was done by the x)easants, who were aleo allotted strips of land for their own use* in retiarn for which they worked so many days a weeic on the part of the land the feudal holder kept for himself - giving additional days' work at certain seasons and giving other occasional services. This system of cultivation of the land is called the manorial system and is sharply distinguished by the modern historians from the system of land tenure described above. The feudal system was a system ol land tenure; the manorial system v.'as a system of land cultivation-. The cultivators of the soil lived in villages - they had _ no farms, but were assigned from time to time certain strips in the common arable fields, and had the right to pasture certain animals in the common pasture, to cut wood in the common forest, and other privileges. C. Vi/hat? Living in villages that prospered and developed, they might in time desire to become a town. Gibbins says (Industry ^n Eng land ) that a town was in itself a manor or group of manors wh- re men lived closer together than elsevAiere.-l-O J But when we speak of the town we usually mean more than this - vre mean the community wi ta its privileges, its membership, its self dependence, and self control, that constituted the medieval borough or comraune. Luchaire says that the commune was born because of the need of the inhabitants of the town for the substitution of a limited and regulated exploitation for the arbitrary exploitation of which they had been the victims.!!-) Tov/ns were marked off from villages by certain characteristics - they were fortified - usually by a wall and ditch; they were collectively instead of individually responsible for the payments due to the feudal lord and the taxes due to the king; and, therefore, the officials of the lord had no reason to invade the town, which settled its own affairs in its own courts and v;as free from the duty of attending the court of the. feudal lord,^^) q^ ^^ England the hundred and county courts,-'-^' for r.uitc concerning matters v/ithin the town. ■"-^j K.de B. Gibbins, Industry in England (New York, 1897), p. 86. !!) Luchaire, 14. 12) \Yilliam Cunningham, Outlines of English Industrial History (New York, 189fa) , p. 46; Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederick ¥. Maitland, History of English Law (2 vols., Cambridge, , 1895), I, 627. !'^> Edward Potts Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of Engl ana (New York, 1910 J . pp. 57, 58. -64- D. Hov:? Luchaire believes that these privileges were at first wrested from the lords "by insurrections, "but "by the twelfth century the hostility of the lords had ceased and the enfranchise-r ment was achieved Vy purchase - a goodly sum "being paid for it. The heavy expenditures of the crusading lords in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries often led them, to secure funds in this way and hastened the grov;th of the towns. The kings found that in their conflicts v/ith unruly vassals the tov/ns could be played off against the nobles, and the favor of the king v/as a great factor in the enfranchisement of towns, ■'■^) E. Importance as trading units . English tov/ns secured from the kings exemption from tolls throughout the king's domain, and the upholding of this right to be exempt from tolls was one of the chief functions of the gild merchant, which in the early days included practically all the citizens and tlirough its collective poY/er secured to each individual merchant the rights that had been given. Retaliation was a most powerful v/eapon for this purpose - if a town, A, denied to the merchants of another town, B, the exemptions that belonged to them, merchants of B that came within the clutches of A would be punished whether or not they had any responsibility for the offense. Towns in the Middle Ages had relations with each other similar to the international relations of to-day - a person from another town viiae a foreigner. International trade as we know it did not exist - one did not think of German trade with England, but of the trade of Ltibeck, let us say, with London or Bristol - the tov;n v;as the unit. F. Population. The population of the English town was fairly homogeneous - merchants, artisans, people who had been serfs of the nobles, but who now v;ere free from any service and whopaid collectively, not individually, what was due to the noble in money. In France clergy and nobles often resided in the tovms ^ and constituted a non-citizen class, exempt from the responsibili- ties of citir.ens and taking no part in the citizen life. °1 In Italy nobles lived in the towns and took active part in their affairs, and to this circumstance much of the turbulence of the Italian city life in medieval times was due.-'-' J On the continent of Europe a nobility of wealth rose among the merchant class also, which often controlled the town in an oligarchial government .^SJ II - Land Selection A. Site . 1. ' ;,ualifi cations, '//hen the new medieval towns began to a-o-p'ear, there were two chief principles that dete-rnined the choice 14) Luchaire, 15, IS. L5) Cunningham, Y/e stern Civilization , II, 91, 92. 16) Luchaire, 61, 62. ^m1^^ r^; The town had the monopoly of the trade of the country round about - the people of the surrounding districts had to bring their products to the town market for disposal34) and the merchants , who dealt in food products v;ere the first to acquire wealth."^^^ Trade between towns was, hov;ever, carried on, and the privileges of merchants trading in other towns were carefully guarded by the merchant gild. 26 J Foreign trade was more important than trade betv/een towns of the sajne country, the products Ox which were too similar to create a great demand for exchange; but this foreign trade was a trade betv;een cities, and v;hen collective 27) Cunningham, II, 59. 28) Ashley, Surveys . 181 (citing Flach, Origines ) . 29 Ibid. 30} Day, 42. 51) Rogers, 7fork and Wages , 104- 32) Ibid , 104. 33) Ernest Belfort. Bax, German Culture Past and Present (London. 1915j,.iri 131-132. 34) Pollock & Maitland, I, 634. 35) Green, Town Life , II, 60. 36) Pollock & Maitland, I, 650. -67- control came in, it was control by acsociations of cities, such as the Hanse - the great league of German towns. Amount of land selected- The amount of land included in the town was small - no large area was needed to house the population of even the greater towns. London had in the thirteenth century probably not more than 25,000 37) . at the beginning of the fifteenth century probably about 40,000-^^^ York and Bristol had perhaps 10,000 each in the thirteenth century ^yj and 12,000 by the beginning of the fifteenth century. "^^^ In the last centuries of the Middle Ages famous towns like Nuremberg and Strassburg had not over 20,000 inhabitants,^!) Frankfort had scarcely 10,000. '^2) According to Ashley only ten to\vns in England had more than 5000 people at the beginning of the fifteenth century. 43) The areas occupied by the towns were correspondingly small. Of the English town area I have found no figures, but Nuremberg covered about 340 acres, Strassburg, 193 acres - these being large and important places as xie have seen by the figures for their population. Eberstadt, speaking of the German cities, estimates the average size as 60 - 120 hectares - about 150 to 30 acres ;-^'' It ha3 often been stated that the small area of the town was due to the necessity of enclosing it with a v;all, and that the inhabitants lived crowded within the walls. Eberstadt says, speaking of German cities, that this was true only of a few early settlements, that there was room inside the v;alls to provide the citizens with gardens, that there were open extra spaces needed to accomodate the people who came into tov/ns for protection in time of war, and to provide for feeding the inhabitants in time of siege, when their supplies from the outside v/ere cut off. "^^^ Freo.uent expansions took place. Often a new v/all was built to include the new territory and the old one was allov/ed to remain. ^o) The building of nev/ walls v/as not a great undertaking - the fortifications were neither expensive nor difficult to construct. Between 1200 and 1450 Strassburg had four such expansions ^M - Cologne until 1882 included no more territory than it had in- cluded in the expansion of 1180 - 700 years before. Great ex- pansions took place in \-jQTms and Basel in the thirteenth century, while Ilagdeburg had taken in as much territory to the south and west m 1100 as it contained in 1870. ^^S) Cunningham has noted similar expansions, after the crusades, in the English towns 37] Cheyney, Ind. a Soc- Hist. 57. 38) '^".J^ Ashley, An Introduction to Engl i sh Economic History and Theory (2 vols".. New York, 1894), II, 11 39) Cheyney, 57. 40) Ashley, Ec Hist. II. 11. 41) Day, 45. 42) Ibid. 43) Ashley, Ec - Hist. , II, 11. 44) Rudolf Eberstadt Handbuch d.es Wohnungsv^fe sens ' und der Wohuungsfrage (Jena, 1910"), p. 36. 45) IMd, 29. 46) Ibid . , 35. 47) Ibid . , 35. 48) Ibid, 29, 50. of Bury, Norvjich and Peterborough- ^ Thercj was at the same tine an emigration, from English towns, of weaD.thy burgesses, v;ho bought counxry estates and sought to establish themselves in the ranks of the country gentry. 50) Selection of land inside t}i£ tovrn ♦ 1. Public . Selection of land inside the tov;n must be considered in tv/o parts - selection of the public land - streets, markets, etc. - and selection of private land. The market place v/as usually a centrally located square or rectangular open place in which v;as often found a market cross^-K Near the market place were the church and the common hall - sometimes it v/as the tovm hall, sometimes a gild hall, aometimes both existed. In small towns the churchyard might be the inarket place and the ^g- church itself might serve as the meeting place for the co37imunity. The streets that formed the sides of the market square were cardinal or main streets of the city and usually they led to the four gates of the city.^^j Sometimes parallel main streets ran through a city joining at their ends near city gates - sometimes the main streets were bent to follov; the direction of some road that led through the city. 54) Leading off from these main streets were the side streets which divided the building land of the tovms into suitable tracts. Y^iile the m£-in streets were moderately wide and fairly direct, these side streets were narrower and were often crooked or bent in direction, because they were constructed by private land ov/ners who were dividing their land to increase its value as building land. They were sometimes bent to correspond viith the boundaries of the privately owned land. 55) Both the main and the side streets might show variations from the right angled system even in cities whose plan v;as rectangular, for topographical reasons - the medieval builder usually adapted his plans to nature instead of forcing nature to the plan. However, this adaptation was not made without con- sideration for aesthetic effect. Eberstadt says that the medieval builder sought a picture changing step by step as the pedestrian proceeded through the street, rather than a distant 49) Cunningham, Western Civilization , II, 92. 50) Ashley, Ec . Hist . , II, 54- 51) Frederick ',Y. Ticknor, Social and Industrial History of England (London, 1918), 66; Gibbins, Industry in England , 96. 52) Ticknor, 66, Green, I, 153-155. 53) H. Inigo Triggs, Tovm Planning {London, 1909), pp. 75, 76. 54) Eberstadt, pp. 37-39. 55) Eberstadt, 37-40; Day, 45-6. -69- perspective. ^^ In those medieval cities tiiat were completely planned "by their founders, the side streets as v/ell as the streets shov/ed regularity . ^' J mam 2. Private. All privately owned land in the city v/as used for res- idence purposes, for the medieval man did not have separate places for business and for residence, "but pursued his occupa- tion in his home. The merchants naturally chose houses along the main streets where there would be most frequent passage of buyers. 5S) j^e artisans of like kind often settled together in certain streets so that there was a localization of industry. This was due partly to regulation, partly to the needs of the industry. Dyers, tanners, vrool washers, fullers, settled along a water course so that the v/aste water used in their industries might be carried off - often in order to protect the water from pollution they were prohibited from settling in certain sections. V/eavers, cloth makers and similar industries were found near ^gx together, probably due to the convenience of common arrangements.. Unlike our modern city with its residence districts, its business districts, its manufacturing districts, in the medieval town all districts were residence districts. In this residential area, in some streets were found residences which were also the business places of merchants, in other streets were residences wi'"^ch were also v^orkshops of craftsmen- There were, hov;ever, zones in these cities which were set off for other reasons. The Jews lived in districts by themselves apart from the other inhabitants.^^) Poreign companies of merchants often secured rights to certain quarters in the to^vns, which they enclosed and shut off from the rest of the town, anr'. in which they lived under their own lav;s instead of the laws cf the town.^^) An example of thi=^ was the Steelyard in London. Ill . Ovt^nership of Land. A. Private . 1. Original . The original owners of the land in towns were the same as in the country^^' - the king, the nobles and the clergy - if indeed v;e can speak of ownership at all at this time. In the feudal system many persons had rigb.ts in any piece of land, but there v;as no such thing as absolute ownership of it. Though at the close of the Roman period there had been many people in both 56) Eberstadt, 40. 57) Ibid . , 38, 39- 58) I bid . , 57. 59) Eberstadt, 57; Clerget, 658, others also- 60) Gibbins, 103. 61) V/iliiam Cunningham, Growth of E nglish Industry and Comiiierce (Cambridge, 1890), pp. 181, 182. 52) Wilhelm Arnold, Geschichte des Eigenthums in den Deutschen Stadten (Basel, 1861). p- 8. -70- to'v.n and country possebsed of aliods, nost of these iiad disappeared during the intervening period. Many of these allodial holders of land v/ent over into an unfree state, giving their land into the possession of lord or bishop or monastery and receiving it 'back in feudal tenure from him.^-^J This transfer v/as often made voluntarily, with the motive of securing the lord's protect- ion. The land was then held by its former owner in return for services or rents. 2. Burga/re tenure. As the Middle Ages advanced, payment of money rents became much more desirable, from the point of view of the user of the land, than payment in services, which were often de- manded at inconvenient times - wlien the tenant most needed to work on his own land - and in amounts that were not so narrov/ly determined that the tenant could not be exploited by the lord's agents. The people in the rising towns often managed to secure a commutation of all services into money rents even before they secured their charters. ^4 J This free tenure for a moneyrent was called in English burgage tenure from burgus the lov/ Latin word for borough or town; and similar terms with similr-r meaning are found in I^ench and German. ^^^ ^mat was the content of the right of burgage tenure? Pollock and IIs.itland in the History of English Law , speaking of the right as it existed in England, include (l) freedom from all f:er-"ices, which were commuted into a fixed money rent, 2) the right of passing on the land e-nd. buildings (or tenement as they were called together) to an heir, to be held on the same terms, 3) the right ci selling the tenement to another who will hold on the same terms. 3ome of these things were enumerated in charters, but they seem to have been more often a matter of custom than an express grant. t)6) 3. Firma burgi • "'."Men the land belonged to the royal domain, or entirely to one of the feudal lords, the townsmen could secure still further independence through the f i rma pur;~i , by which the tovm received the right to be the rent collector of the great land 07/ner, substituting collective responsibilitv for individual responsibility in the matter of rents. uv) They no longer went to the lords or kings court to transfer their tene- ments, but to the town or borough court, and the right of >- the lord over the tenement becomes still more remote -» ) he is now a mere receiver of fixed ground rents. As time went on and 63) Arnold, pp. 8-13 (and many other places). 64) Pollock & Maitland, I, 629. 65) Ashley, Surveys , 199 (quoting Pirenne) . 66) Pollock & Maitland, I, 629, 630. 67) Ibid . , I, p. 276; and others. 68) Ibid . , I, 630. -71- money became less valuable, these fixed rents became hardly more than nominal, 69) g^nd even at that there were frequent remissions of rent lavished on the bouroughs in the later period when nobles and Icings were striving for supremacy.''-') Courts. Even v^hen the land in the tov/n had been originally held from several different feudal lords, the formation of the borough courts enjoying royal franchises had the effect of reducing the lords' rights over the land to a mere right of receiving rent. English Icings in establishing such courts often ordained that none of the townspeople could be held answerable for their tenements within the borough in any other court. '^^ Cheyney says that burgage tenure was the nearest to actual land ov/nership that existed during the Kiddle AgeE.'"^' In English towns possessing the firma b urgi the rent was paid to the town officers \iho v;ere responsible for its collection. These were by no means easy masters, for in certain English tov/ns, if a man failed to pay his rent for the king's ferm, "the doors and v;indows of his house v/ere taken off, every one in it turned out, and the house stood empty for a year and a day or even longer before the doors might be redeemed in full court, or before it passed to the next heir."'73j On the other hand, the English burgess v;as often given additional security in his tenure by the charters sometimes secured from the king, stating that if any one who holds a tenement in the tov;n for a year and a day, the claims of every person to that tenement shall be barred, unless the claimant was in prison, under age or beyond the seas. ''1) Explanations of rise of burgage tenure. English v/riters on the subject of burgage tenure have not shown the interest in v/orking out the reasons for the rise of this system, that is manifested by the Erench and German scholars. The Erench writers, Pirenne and Elach have considered the point, with the result that Pirenne attributes it to the passing over of the personal privileges of freedom possessed by the merchants to the tenements v;laich they held;75) while Elach has seen the system as developing from the privileges granted hy lords wlio wished to attract residents to the villages on their domains."^^) The German investigator, ^Ihelm Arnold, has with pains- taking thoroughness gone back to the ultimate sources of in- formation in this subject - the records of deeds and transfers 69) Ashley, Surveys , 192 (quoting Varges). 70) Green, Tovm Life , I, 27. 71) Pollock & Mai tland, I, 629, 630. 72) Cheyney, Indus. & Social Hist, p. 59. 73) Green, Town Life , I, 141- 7 4) Pollock & Maitland, I, 632. 75) Ashley, Surveys , 197-199 (abstracting Pirenne). 76) Ibid ., 183 (quoting Elach) . -72- of landed property in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He believes that the transition froiu a feudal tenure to tiie free tenure v;hich Wc..s so much like complete ownership, v/cs due to the principle of Germanic law that distinguished "between property in land and propeity in buildings on that land, v/hich superseded the principle of Roman lav; that gave to the l^nd owner ownership of any improvements that might be put upon it.''/ Arnold recognises three stages :- (1) Lord as ovmer, tenant has merely possession- (2) Lord and tenant have like riglits due to the separate ov/nership of land and buildings. (3) Property belongs to the tenant - the lord has only a fixed ground rent changeable neither in amount nor in times of payment .'''2) Documents examined by him indicate that the first stage still prevailed in German cities in the thirteenth century, ^ the fourteenth century sav; the development of the second stage, i and the fifteenth century, the a.ccomplishment of the third. °'-') S^erstadt, another student of German cities, believes that these changes came about through the need for securing the best utilization of the land. He says that while the whole agrarian system of the time rested on the indivisibility of the land, city life required divisibility for the furnishing of all citizens with land and for its best utilisation, and that the difficulty was passed by the device of leasing the lot for a fixed rent to a tenant who had unlimited control of the land as long as he paid the rent, who had ownership of the buildings he put upon the lot, and who could pass both leased lot and buildings to his heirs. Q"^) Landed property qualification for citizenship . The possession of landed property was thus not difficult to attain. °2) in the English towns probably from the beginning artisans had burgage tenements, but Arnold finds that in the German cities the artisans or hand workers did not hold landed property until the end of the thirteenth century. 83) This ease of acquiring burgage tenure v.'as the more important because the privileges of citizen- ship were bound up with the holding of land. Full citizenship depended primarily on the possession of a house and land withip the town limits. ^4) Sometimes new citizens were required to buy houses within their first year. 85) This v/as not surprising at a 77) Sberstadt, 44 (summarising Arnold): Arnold, pp. 25S-288 f f . 78) Arnold, 258. 79) Ibid-., 272, 275, ff.; 277-231. SO) ibid. , 286 ff . 81) Eberstadt, 43, 44. 82) Ashley, Surveys , 192 ( citing Varges) . 83) Arnold, 31-33. 84) Cheyney, 59; Ashley, Surveys , 205 (abstracting Keutgen) , -^15; Ashley, Ec_. H ist, II, 23; Cunningham, Growth , etc. 95; Luchaire, 55, 57. 85) Luchaire, 56-7. -73- B period when political institutions were so completely iDound up wixh the feudal system of land tenure. No doubt it would not hare occurred to the medieval townsmen to include as responsible citizens the landless men. Kor would it have been altogether reasonable, for the land holder v/as the bearer of municipal burdens - he paid "scot and lot" with his fellow townsmen, he shared the common burdens and earned the privileges that he possessed, S6J and these privileges he guarded carefully against the intrusion of outsiders .87 ) Sometimes indeed the burdens overbalanced the privileges, and in -Qie Prench towns where nobles and clergy were also residents, vdthout taJ-cing part in either the burdens or privileges of citizenship, we find occasionally^ that townsmen try to escape the burdens by qualifying as "clerks, " and at other times there were regulations to oblige all in- habitants who had houses in the tov;n to become members of the communal association. 88) Hov/ever, as time v/ent on this situation changed somewhat. The aniiount of land required for citizenship decreased. In Liverpool in the fourteenth century it was one eighth or even one forty-eighth of Y^at it had been originally. In some towns the son of a citizen mi^t become a citizen before he inherited his father's property. 89) The owners of burgage tenements might let houses to artisans, who.v.'ould achieve citizenship without the possession of burgage tenements by membership in the craft gilds. Before or during the fifteenth century a conpiet.e change took place. Citizenship came to be associated v/ith membership in the gilds, ajid the town council was itself, in v/hole or in part, composed of representatives of the gilds. An association of persons as persons had talcen the place of an association based upon land . -O) Long before municipal or even gild life began to decay it had done an important work, politically and socially, by recognizing persons as standing for themselves and not tied to the land or depending on a superior lord. "Land was no longer the basis of everything: a nev; social and economic form had appeared, and slowly, but surely feudalism began to give way before itJ'91) Public . Tihere the English boroughs secured the f irm a burf^i 'and were collectively responsible for the rents, v;hich v;ere paid to the tovrn officials, it might be supposed that a certain title to tlie landed property was vested in the town itself; but this was not the case. The burgesses did not hold their lands from 86) Cunninghaia, Growth , 203, 205. 67) Ibid . , also Cunningham, West. Civ. , II, 93. 88) Luchaire, 56 ff 89) Green, I, 172 - 3. 90) Ashley, Ec. Hist. . II, 23, 24- 91) Gibbins, p. 97. -7 4- the tovm, and iDroperty that escheated, escheated to the king and not to the borough. 92"} indeed it is doubtful whether the public property of the tovm - the v;alls, ditches, streets and open spaces - were the property of the burgesses collecti\'ely • They were still thou^t of'as the king's walls, the king's streets, etc., and one :vho encroached upon them was held to have committed an offense against the king, 93) The idea of the town as a corporation, capable of holding property as a person, v;as un- developed at the time of the rise of the towns, and developed very slov;ly, step by step v/ith the development of the idea of property. 94,' This public property, held if not owned by the burgesses, v/as very small - little more than the walls, streets, ditches, open spaces, market places, though in some cases patriotic citizens willed their property to the tovm. 95) There was reason for this from the feudal point of view. 7rora the middle of the thirteenth century there had been outcry against gifts in mort- main - that is gifts to bodies that had a perpetual existence, such as the church, monasteries , etc. These were undesirable tenants tliat never died, never married, never committed felony, and hence v/ere never liable for payments of the dues and fines collected by feudal lords on such occasions. Tovms were equally undesirable, hence vv'e see the kings clinging to the title to tne lr...,r. v.'hich the burgess controlled. 96) Common . ITor is it at all certain v.hether the king parted with the title to the common lands over which the burgesses had the right of use. Tl'.ese, unlike the public property of the town^^ were considerable in extent and v/ere outside the town walls. They consisted of arable land used in strips (as in the manorial system), pastures, v/oodlands, meadows, 98) sometimes also fisheries, salt pits and other things. 99) These could not be divided, rented, or sold, but were used in common by individual burgesses under definitely determined conditions .^00) Tor example, a certain tenement carried with it the right to graze so inany animals on the common pasture- In rich coinmunities as well as in poor struggling boroughs the inhabitants never relaxed their vigilance in the protection of their common property. They assembled yearly to "beat the bounds" and to see that there had been no diminishing of their rights nor alienation of their common land, and that there had been no favoritism in the allotments . ^Oi. 92) Pollock & Kaitland, I, 636, 637, 638. 93) Ibid . , I, G35, 636. 94) Ashley, Surveys , 233 ( citing Mai tland and Gierke), 95) Pollock fie Maitland, I, 639. 96) Ibid. 97) Pollock & Maitland, I, 636; Ashley, Surveys, 173, citing Luchaire. 98) Cunningham, West. Civ. ,11, 60; Green, I, 136. 99) Green, I, 133. 100) Ashley, Ec ■ Hist . , II, 40, 41; Surveys , 232. 10l)Green, Town Life , I, 137. -7 5- IV - -uiand Utilization. After all we have hea-'Cl about trade being the cause of the e::istence of towns, it comes as a* surprise v/hen we are told that the chief use to rhich land was put in the medieval tovm was an agricultural use. A- Conimon Lands . Of the common lands outside the town we would expect no tiling else. These consisted of woodlands, pastures and, in the early days, of arable fields also, though this crop land had nearly everywhere disappeared before the end of the Middle Ages.lCS) 3ut common pastures long continued, in which the townspeople grazed their animals the number of animals that could be put upon the common by each person being definitely determined and special officers appointed to see that this rate or stint, as it was called, v;as not exceeded. 103) These rights were no mean addition to the resource of the burgher household, and the enjo;:,'ment of them was carefully guarded against intrusion of outsiders. -'-0'^) B. Private land . 1. Agriculture. But it v/as more surprising to find that the privately owned land within the walls was used chiefly for agricultural purposes. Most of the townspeople had garden .plots; 1*^5' many also had orchards ; 106) they kept about their tenements - sometimes even in the house itself - the animals which v/ere pastured on the comn.on lands, and the effort to keep wander- ing pigs off the streets was a distinct failure. 107) in harvest time many of the citizens v;ent out into the country and took part in the gathering of the crops - Coblentz stopped work on the city walls during harvest time in the thirteenth century. 108) Even in important German cities such as Frankfurt, Nuremburg, and Augsburg, cows, pigs, sheep, fov/ls, and geese were kept with- in the city walls. Prani:furt had to forbid pig styes in front of the houses by a decree in 1481. The bankers' gild of Ulm forbade any member of it to have more than 24 pigs and cows; l^Iuremberg in 1475 decreed tiiat no pigs or other stock Liust run loose on the streets. lOS) Inventories of wealth, taien for the purpose of assessing taxes, show the agricultural characteristics of the towns. The roll of Colchester, taken in 1295, shows a preponderance of agricultural property such as live stock and agricultural produce, although Colchester was one of the more impor'^ant tov;ns at that time. 110 ) 102) Ashley, :ec . Hist ., II, 40, 41. 103) Ibid . , II, 40, 41; Surveys , 232. 104) Ashley, Ec Hist ., II, 41. 105) Ticknor, 61; Day, 45; Bax. German Culture , 133; Rogers, '.York and Vages , 111 106) Bax, German Culture , 133. 107) Day, 45. 108) Ibid. 109) Bax, German Culture , 153. 110) Day, 46-7. r^g In 1519 one of the most respectaljle innkeepers of Bridport owned: 2 hogs 1 horse 2 beds 1 "brass pot 2 tablecloths 1 platter 2 hand napkins A fev; wooden vessels Some malt.m) In 1380 the mayor of Liverpool had property valued at L28 6s 4d - made up of Domesti ' utensils Grain in store ^Vheat sown 9 oxen and cows 6 horses 18 pigs and he was no doubt a rich man in his borough. "■' Rogers says that even London was a rus in urbe, as nearly all walled tov/ns in England were. 115) Residence . The fact that the tovmspeople used their land and hci'ses for both residence and business purposes has been touched upon. We are apt to think, vAien v/e hear of a medieval town house, of some picture that we have seen shov/ing a charming building of considerable dimensions, better built than our dv/ellings of to-day, and frequently far more artistic. But it must be -emeinbered that only the best buildings survived the wear and tear of intervening centuries, and that the class of buildings of which the charming survivor was a type did not begin, to be built until near the end of the Middle Ages.H^) Mrs. Green described the English town houses about 1300 as "mud or wood framed huts with gabled roof of thatch and reeds'.' "lining narrow lanes and sheltering a people who, accepting a common poverty, traded in little more than the mere: necessaries of life. It was not till the middle of the fourteenth century that the towns as they entered a larger industrial activity began to free themselves from the indesc^-ibable squalor and misery of the early Middle Ages."115) xhe houses were built of wood, or with v/ooden frames filled in with mud or plaster and v/hitewashed, and were eo flimsy in structure that they could easily be pulled down with a. hook. This is exactly v;hat v/as done in case of fire, to prevent the fire -from spreading elsewhere. Fires were 111) Green, Town Life, I, 11 112) Ibid. .11, 51, note. 113) Rogers, Work and Wages 114) 115) Lay. 46, 47. Green, I, 13. 111. -77. frequent and disastrous, for the houses were not provided with any proper arrangements for heating or cooking - there v/ere no chimney s.-'-^S^ The interiors were narrgw, dark, drafty, good neither for v;ork nor for residence.il''' j The ordinary householder had fev/ of the comforts of life. His dwelling had an earthen floor, no carpets, hardly any furniture. The meat v/as served from spits "because of a lack of earthenware plates. Well-to-do burgesses lived in this fashion at the end of the thirteenth century; royal palaces v/ere little better at the time of King John.ll&) Speaking particularly of German tov/ns , Htillman says that only in the thirteenth century does a desire for beautiful dv/ellings av^aken - there is no trace of it before. H^) Up to this time few fine houses could c.e found except in some of the more important Italian tov;ns and perhaps in Flanders and in the free cities of the Rhine. 120) Even as late as the end of the fifteenth century an Italian writer commented on the lack of fine houses in London. 121] Ticknor has given an account of tiie houses that could be found in an English to-.-m in the fourteenth century. The houses of the poorer people in back lanes were usually of one story only; sometimes a chamber was built above this, reached by an outside stair. Tlie upper room, if such existed, projected over the lower into the street. A more prosperous artisan would have a i) rase with a cellar; the ground floor, a foot or two above_ the street, was used as a shop; and living rooms for the family were either back of this or above it, while the apprentices often slept in the shop. The shop had a large windovif shutter that let down as a counter v;here goods might be displayed for sale. A wealthy merchant, such as a pepperer, a mercer, or a goldsmith, might possess a house with two stories beside the cellar. The ground floor would be occupied by the shop, with a large hall or living room behind it and often a kitchen also. A stairway at the side led to the large sleeping apartment above, a third story under the high roof might be used for storage. These better houses had often party walls of stone to a height of sixteen feet, the upper floors only being of wood. 122) While English writers speak of the use of different floors in two story houses as separate tenements, I have found no description of double and multiple houses in English tov/ns in these early centuries. Eberstadt, speaking of German towns mentions three distinct types of houses, (l) the separate house standing free on all sides, (2) the "half house" - though the vertical division of a larger house, (3) rows of houses 116) Day, 46, 47. 117) Ibid . 118) Cunningham, Growth , I, 275. 119) Karl Dietrich HiUllraan, Stadtwesen des Mitt e lalte rs (4 vols Bonn, 1826-9), IV, 34. 120) Rogers, Work and Wages , 112. 121) George Gordon Goulton, Social Life in Britain from the Concuest to. th_e Reformation (Cambridge, 1918), 334 Iciting Ital ian Relatio ns^ pT 4l) - 122) Ticknor, pp. 60-63. ^-o under one roof. ^^ The p?.an of lot v/as, as is usual today, narrow with generous depth, and the house v/as placed at the front, v/ith its narrow end to the streetA24) it was often separated from its neighbor by a side set-off going dov/n to a gutter that carried off rain and v;aste water. The house sometimes had windows on this side, but this was not alv/ays pleasing to the neighbors, and it is througli the neighborhood feuds that were fought out in the courts that many details concerning the structure of these houses have been gleaned. 1-25) ?ron the small number of rooms that must shelter the family, the apprentices, or the servants of the merchant, and provide shop or salesroom and store rooms as well, it is evident that there must have been crowding of people in the houses even if there was not crowding of houses in the town. 3. Commerce and manufacture. As we have seen, the ground floor front room v;as used as a shop by merchant and artisan. Often a v/indow shutter, when let down, formed a counter for the display of the artisan's goods, if, indeed, he did any displaying. 126 ) Often he v/orked on materials supplied to him by the person who had ordered his work, and frequently he took his tools and did the work at the home of the customer. ^27) The merchants v.'ho had goods ready to sell also displayed them in front of their homes on benches across the v/indow spaces or in booths attached to the houses, 128) while signs telling passers by of their wares hung nine feet above the street from the over hanging upper stories, which formed a sort of pent-house over the display place below. This height for signs and for the overhanging upper stories was required in the interest of horsemen passing through the streets. ^29) j^ the early part of the Middle Ages there v/ere fev/ merchants who were solely merchants - most of them practised some sort of manual calling. In the tv/elfth century the members of the merchant gild were craftsmen first and merchants next as far as the occupation of their time went. ^^ ) Some idea of the busi^^ess uses to which the medieval townsmen put their houses can be seen from the list of occupations in Colchester - taken for the poll tax in 1377. 123) Eberstadt, 47. 124) Ibid . , 45; Ticknor, 61. 125) Eberstadt, 47. 126) Ticknor, 61. 127) Ashley, Surveys , 210, 226; Rogers, Work and Wages, 144; Other authorities also. 128) Day, 46, 47. I29J Ticknor, 63. 130) Cunningraan Outlines . 63, 64. -79- Clergymen 12 And one each of the following: People of substance 10 Vinter Shoemakers 16 Iron monger Parmers 13 Brewer Smiths 10 Glazier Weavers 8 Sea coal dealer Butchers 8 Old clothes dealer Bakers 7 Fuel dealer Pullers 6 Cooper Girdlers 6 Viliite leather seller Mariners 5 Potter Millers 4 Parchment maker Tailors 4 Furrier Dyers 3 Cook rishermen 3 Tiler Carpenters 3 Bov/yer Spicers or grocers 3 Barber llustarder V/ool comber Lorimer Wood turner Linen draper ?/lieelwright Glover^^-) C Publ ic Lands . The utilization of urban public lands in the_ Middle Ages presents even a greater contrast to modern conditions. Today we think of the streets as useful chiefly for transporta- tion, for the i^iaintenance of sufficient light and air in the build- ing facing upon them, and for the carrying of public utilities such as water and gas mains, v/ires for light, telephone, telegraph, etc. Theee purposes the streets of a medieval town served badly or not at all. As a path for transportation the medieval street was very inadequate. It v/as not paved; in v/et weather it became a sea of mud; even in dry v;eather it might be in such a condition because of the floods of v^aste v/ater drained into it from the houses of dyers, tanners, wool vrashers and others who used water in their work. 132) Even when the street v;as dry it was filled with obstacles. The iron worker sometimes cast the cinders from his foundry, smoking hot, upon the street; 133) lumber dealers blocked it with trees; grain dea.lers vrinnowed their grain by throwing it from an upper window into the street to get rid of the cliaff which drifted off in clouds. The housekeeper had no more respect for the proper use of the street than had her artisan husband, all the v/aste from the kitchen was thrown into the street where it remained to decay unless it was eaten by the pigs and dogs that v/andered over the streets, constituting the sole method of garbage disposal known in the Middle Ages. Indeed so necessary v;as the work of these scavengers that when tovms in a spirit of civic zeal decreed that these animals must 131) Rogers, 132) Green, 133) Ibid. ITork and ^^age^s , 121. Town "Li~f e , II, 30, 31. -SO- te kept off the streets, the dangers of pestilence due to the presence of decaying matter were increased. ^^4) I have found no more vivid picture of the condition of the streets in the Middle Ages than that given by Mrs. J.R. Green in her Tov-'n Life : She says: "Streets were choked with the refuse of the stahle, made irapassihle ty the ' skaldynge de hogges', flooded by the overflow of a house, drowned by the turning of a watercourse out of its way or the putting up of a dam by some private citizen heedless of ill consequences to the public road. Lumber dealers cast trunks of trees right across the street, dyers poured their waste waters over it till it became a mere swamp, builders blocked it up utterly with the framework of their new houses, and traders made their v;harves upon it. Not only the most thriving and respectable merchants, such as the Honinwodes , but the butcher and sv/ine keeper as well, threv/ the waste of house and shambles and swine-cote into the open street till there vjas scarcely any passage left for the wayfarer; or established a 'hoggestok' , 'which smells very badly and is abominable to all men coming to market, as v/ell as to all dwelling in the tov;n. ' "^•'''^^ Even a university town like Carabridge sho^ved no better con- ditions, as the record f i om Cooper's Annals of Cambridge shows a royal writ required the Chancellor of the University of Carabridge "to remove from the streets and lanes of the tov/n all sv/ine, and all dirt, dung, filth and branches of trees; and to cause the streets sjid lanes to be kept clean for the future. "156) The merchants as well as the artisaTiS made use of the streets for their ov/n purposes. Besides disposing of v/aste upon it, they encroached upon the street by displaying their wares upon it in front of their houses, even, in the later Middle__^Ages, building booths for these wares out into the streets, l^v) thus narrowing further a sufficiently narrow way. The narrowness of the streets prevented the performance of tliat service that we expect of them - the mrintenance of an adeouate supply of light and air. The limited amount of light and air that might have been provided was shut off further by the overhanging upper stories that in some cases, where there were many stories, extended so far over the street that in- habitants of houses on opposite sides of the street could . easily reach across the little space that was left between them. '^°J Streets then, poor r,s suppliers of the facilities ^ve expect streets to supply were utilir^ed for purposes of raanufacture, of 134) Green, Town Life , II, 30, 31. 135j Ibid, II, 29. 136) Coultcn, Social Life, 330, from Cooper Ar- nals pf^ Ca mbridge , I, 154. 137) Eberstadt, 42. 138) Rogers, Vork and TJages , 111. (Also other authors). -81- of trade, ever, for residence if v/a interpret the encroachment^ on street space oy the upper rtories of dv^ellings as utilization of street area. The streets were also used for another purpose that seems strange to us. They were used for the dissemination of news - they tool: the place, to a certain extent, of newspapers and postoffices. The meetings at the town hall and the meetings of the court v;ere cried in the streets; court cases were announced by the town crier, and the probation of wills; ordinances and royal proclamations were called on the streets. Advertising of plays, minstrels, etc. was done by crying through the streets. / y. Public Services and Public Utilities . The condition of the streets and the uses to which they were put were largely due to a lack of what v/e know as public services and public utilities. Some of these things began to be supplied as the Middle Ages advanced. Uil/XCS UJ.U out, V.'JiJ.. UX ;i lyA =t u JJl^WiJig, w^i-^jr ;ntury as is evident from dates given by HUllman bologna 1241; iiodena, 1262; Padua, 1265.-1-42) in A. Street Paving . The paving of streets, for example, begins toward the end of the twelfth century. Paris wes the first of the great cities to pave its streets in 1184^-°^ or 1185.-^^-^ Even the Italian cities did the work of street paving only in the thirteenth cei riorence, 1236; Be Germany, Augsburg paved its streets in 1415, after a citizen had made a beginning before his ov^x^ house, Regensburg in 1403, and Nuremberg a little earlier. ^^3/ London was the last of the great cities to pave its streets, in 14? 7; and other English tovvrns followed its example in the fifteenth century. ^^"^^ Even when the paving was done, it v/as not alv/ays by the town. The act of Parliament for the paving of Southampton, for example, required each citizen to pave before his own door as far as the middle of the street, ^-^ and the citizens were quite generally required to work upon the streets as well as . the harbors or dykes, if the town happened to have them.-^^*^) B. Street Cleanin g- S oM/er age . As v;e have seen, street cleaning service was pr?.ctically unknown. Garbage that cluttered the streets might be eaten by the dogs and pigs. T^'aste water flowed into the gutters which night be in the middle of the street v/ith the sides sloping toward it. The absence of paving allowed much of the v;a.ter to soak through. Only a heavy rain gave anything like a gener-?.i cleaning and in dry s.asons conditions became 139) Green, Town Life, I; 3 61-^ 140) Eberstadt, 56. 141) Htillraan, IV. 37-38. 142) Ibid. 143) Ibid . 144) Green, Town Life , I, 18 (note); Htillman, IV, 37 145) Green, I, 18, note. 146) Ibid., I, 141-3. -82- very bad.^'^'^ Occasional effcrtt; at cleaning up v/ere made - for example, the order of the chancellor of the University of Cambridge already cited, and a law of Richard II of England passed in 1388 ordering town officers throughout his kingdom to clean their toT'ns of all that could corrupt and infect the air and bring disease. ^^S) Toward the end of the period there is a beginning of sewer construction - often at first as a private undertaking. Such was the construction of a sewer at Canterbury in 1485 by V/illiam Pratt at his ovm expense. -^i^ J C. Water Supply . The water supply for domestic purposes v/as secured 'chiefly from the wells that stood in the gardens behind the houses. For industrial purposes a larger supply was needed, v/hich Was obtained from some stream - often by diverting part of it through damming. This, v/hen done by the artisans themselves, had sometimes dicastrous effects. The cities sometimes undertook such work, especially those that had traditions of like service in the old Roman days. Hflllman names some such tovms that es- tablished water service; Milan, 1179; Siena, 1193; Cremona, 1235; Como, 1257; Modena, 1259; Parma, 1283-85; London, 1236; Colmar, 1292.150} D. Street Lighting . Street lighting as a public service did not exist - it came in mostl^^ in the sixteenth century after the end of the Middle Ages, though London had d.one something in this direction in the fifteenth century. 151) Citizens who ventured into the streets had to provide their own lighting by carrying lanterns, and it is unlikely that they would often venture at night into the streets that have been described. Beside the accidents that might occur through the condition of the streets, they might also expeqt the attacks of marauders, who could easily perpetrate their crimes in the darkness that prevailed. The Christmas custom of burning candles in our windows until they are entirely consumed, to v/hich we rather sentimentally cling, appears to have a far from sentimental origin. A London ordinance of 1405 orders an extra T;atch put on for Christmas, which was to allow no "people with visors or false faces" to go about, and it further orders "that on the outside of every house that is upon the high streets and lanes of the said city, every nighty during the solemn Eeast aforesaid, a lantern shall be hung, with a lighted candle therein, the same to burn so long as it iTiay last." 152) E. Police Protection . Police protection, such as it was, v;as provided by the town watcij, made up of citizei'" who took their turns at tliis service. 1^3) This was pxobably not a loved duty, for Luchaire mentions a v/atch and a counter watch - those serving in the latter were to see that the former did their duty.-^^) 147) Ticknor, 60. 148) 12 Richard II, cap. 13. 149) Green, I, 19, 20. 150) Htillman, IV, 39. 151) Kiillman, IV, 15. 152) Coulton, 332. 153) Green, I, 132-3; Luchaire, IJ 154) Luchaire, 182-3. -83- \o The efforts of the roembers of the watch in the dark streets were not very effectual, especially v/hen the offenders were on horse - a nunber of French, German and Italian tovi/ns used the device of stretching chains a.cross tlieir streets at night to prevent the passage of riotous horseinen. 155) F. Fire Protection . Protection from fire v.-as largely in the effort for xire prevention. The curfev/ required the covering 01 fires at eight or nine o'clock. 156} The tovm authorities urged the substitution of stone for v;ood,157) and in the fifteenth century we find orders for the substitution of tiles for thatch as roofing. 158) 'v/hen a fire actually broke out the chief method of dealing with it v/as to tear dov/n the burning building, and the alderman's hook was an instrument intended for liiis purpose. 159) Disastrous fires v;ere very frequent. G. Other S ervices . ^xile the public services which we expect were perforued so badly or not at all, other services were given. The tov;n ran its own mill.lSC) it often ran public ovens, brewhouses, and bakehouses, ISl) it sometimes undertook the purchase of the supply of grain for the whole town. 162) Entertainment was also provided at tov/n expense by waits, minstrels, shovjers of animals, and there were public games, feasts and pageants . 163) VI. Regulati on of Use of Land. A- Public Land . That some regulation of the use of land developed we have seen through incidental references. These may be con- sidered under two headings: regulation of the use of public land and regulation of the use of private land. "Ue have noted cases of prohibition of the use of the streets for the disposal of refuse. Such regulations are met v/ith more frequently as time advances. Htlllman, who has studied the ordinances of German, French and Italian cities, has found orders for clearing the streets of structures that were built in front of houses, for cleaning of drains; orders prohibiting the running of pigs on the streets, the casting of refuse into the streets, the throwing of dirty water from windows. Butcher and fish dealers must not soil the streets with their wares, leather workers, fullers, and dyers must not v/ork on the street and must not let the v/ater from their shops out until evening; flax and hemp must not be broken on the streets. 164) 155) Hilllman, IV, 15 (Marseilles, Aachen, Siena, Parma, Regensburg) . 156) Ticknor, 59. 157) Ibid ., 64. 158) Coulton, 518. 159) Green, I, 193-4; Ticknor, 64. 160) Ashley, Zc , Hist . II, 32, 33; Cunningham, Outlines , 55-6. 161| Ashley, 3c. Hist . , II, 40, 41. 162) Gibbins, Ind . in 3ng . , 97; Ashley, Ec.. Hist . II, 53. 163) Green, I, 145. 164) Httllman, IV. 40, 41, 42. -84- * B. Private Land . The use of private property is also regulated to some extent. Leather, v/ool. cloth and hides must not be washed v/ithin the city limits, "but at appointed places outside the v/alls in certain continental cities.^^^S) English butchers -were prohibited from doing the actual slaughtering of animals within the ■►7alls of a town in 1487.1^6) Dung pits must be of a certain depth, -67) pig styes must not be built in front of the houses. 16b) Citizens v/ere required to observe certain regulations for fire prevention. 169) An evidence of this regulation in London in 1302 is found in the record of the agreement of Thomas Bat vath the city: "1302 Thomas Bat came before John le Blund, Mayor of London, and the Alderman, and bound himself, and all his rents, lands, and tenements, to keep the City of London indemnified from peril of fire and other losses which rnigiit arise from his houses covered with thatch, in the Parish of St. Laurence Candelwykstrete; and he agreed that he would have the said houses covered with tiles about the Feast of Pentecost then next ensuing. And in case he should not do the Sd-me, he granted that the Mayor, Sheriff, and bailiffs, of London, should cause the said houses to be roofed with tiles out of the issues of his rents aforesaid. "170) London had a building act as early as 1189 containing seme stringent provisions as to what kind of houses men might erect. I'i'l) Eberstadt believes that there was in German cities much more regulation of building than appears in the public records, because of the fact that building was a matter of gild regulation and the regulations of the gilds were not written down until the fifteenth century. l'i'2) He has found ordinances in Cologne and Sachsenspiegel limiting the height of houses;! '^-^j there were regulations against leaving lots made vacant by fires, without buildings - the owner had either to build or to sell. 174) This provision was not as harsh as it seems because of the ease of housebuilding due to the presence of material for it in the town common forests. 175) He finds that in the fourteenth century an expropriation lav; was developed and used especially for extending the walls and ditches in the frequent 165) K-allman, IV, 40-41. 166) Green, Town Life , II, 32. 167) Hilllman, IV, 40, 41. 168) Bax, 133. 169) Hiillman, IV, 33; Coulton, 318, quoting Riley, Memorials of Lonuon and London Life, 46. 170) Coulton, Social Life , 318, from H.T. Riley's Memorials of London and London Life , 46. 171) Pollock & Maitland, I, 644. 172) Eberstadt, 56. 173) Ibid . 174) Ibid . ,54. 175) Ibid . , 55. -85- expansions of the to-.vns , as well as for street building and for the expansion cf the cities. 176] He says that the Middle Ages recognized the whole of city building as a problem of settlement and that everything is subordinated to this great purpose; regulation of everything - from trade in land to city expansion- must adapt itself to this. ^'^'^ J VII . Taxation . Land Value and the Real Estate Business . Taxation . 7/e have seen that public services vere few, that of those there were, many were provided by the citizens working together; hence the need for taxes for town purposes v/as small.-" ^^ The power of taxation was not ex^^ressly granted in the charters of English tov/ns before the time' of Edward I. If they wished to repair their walls, bridges or streets, they had to apply to the king for a grant of murage, pontage or pavage.179) This process recognized the right of the king to tax his boroughs; and to this right he continued to cling. Pollock and Maitland say. of the English tov/ns, that the burgher's duty of paying "scot and lot" v/i til his fellows came home to him chiefly, if not solely, as a duty of contributing tov/ard sums exacted from the borough by an outside power. 180) Since the burgesses were collectively responsible for taxes, any revenues they had mdght be applied to the payment of the tax. The town had regular revenues from the tolls it imposed on out- siders (v/hich were no inconsiderable resource ), 181) from the profits of the courts (an important financial asset in the Middle Ages), and from the burgage rents. If these sources could not pay what was exacted, a tax levy might be made, but this was usually levied on the burgesses in proportion to their goods and chattels, and v/as not a land tax. 182) Taxes were sometimes assessed ;n the various mercantile or industrial companies according to their standing. However, a house tax v/as also levied at times - not as a percentage^of the value of the house, but as a hearth tax or chimney tax. 183) Early in the fifteenth century special taxes were imposed occasionally on land ovmers and holders of rent charges, which were to develop later into forms of an income taz.lo'l) It must be remembered, however, that these taxes v/ere not the regular taxes v/ith ■which ^'e are familiar, but were imposed at irregular intervals . The incom.e f torn the royal domain and the 176) tTDeret-r.ut, 53- 177) Ibid . , 56. ' 178) Pollock & Maitland, I, 647-8. 179) Ibid . , 646. 180) Ibid . , 647-8. 181) Ibid . , 648. 182) Pollock S: Maitland, I, 663-4; Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy . "Taxation." 183) Cunningham, Y/est . Civ. , II, 93; Palgrave, Dictionary , "Taxation." 184) Palgrave, Dictionary , "Taxation." -86- feudal revenues covered most of the needs of the stat.e, and taxation was resorted to only occasionally. An interesting circumstance was, that if the town fell in arrears in its pa^r^ents of rents or taxes, the king could pro- ceed against all the burgesses or against any burgess for the amounts due. The principle would seem to be that the borough was responsible for its ne;abers and that any member v/as responsible for the v/hole borough - a principle similar to that used in medieval trade retaliations .18^/ The finances of the French communes seem to have been less v;ell administered than thos-- of the English towns. They derived their revenues from public property (very little), the proceeds of the courts, some indirect taxes, and some direct taxes imposed at irregular intervals. Their receipts were not always equal to their expenditures, and they resulted to the disastrous expedient of contracting loa.ns which frequently reduced them to a bankruptcy. This bankrupt condition was one of the factors contribui". ing to the fall of French towns f^orn their free condition, v/hich laf^ted only from 1130 to 1350, ^^o) the other important factor being the strength of the rising French monarchy. Luchaire says, in justice to the towns, that , the expenses which ruineu them were the payments exacted from vdthout; but he also says that the towns, like other medieval gruups, ignored or misunderstood economic lav/s.l87) Luchaire also gi\-es figures for the value of the collective rents paid by different French towns in the thirteenth century, v/hich, if v/e had figures shov;ing the nature and extent of the property, might give us some idea of its value. ^^S) It -".vould probably be a fruitless task, however, to estimate in any none:, standard the- value of real property in the Middle Ages, because of the difference betv;een the purchasing pov;er of money then and now, as well as variation in its purchasing pov/er during that period. B. Land Values . YJhen it is remembered that the ground rent of the original owners was fixed a,nd unchangeable it will be seen that any increase in the value cf real property would fall to the buildings. 189) 'r;^^^ value of -any building, compared with others, would depend on its own qualities - whether it was nev; or old, large or small, etc., and also on the rent of the ground on v;hich it stood. If the rent of this was high, the value of the house v/as less in proportion; if the ground rent was low, the value of the building was high. 190 ) Arnold ex<-jiiined hundreds of deeds, 185) Pollock & Maitland. 563-4. 186) Green, I, 29; Luchaire, 288 fi. 187) Luchaire, 204, 2C5. 188) Ibid . , 197. 189) Eberstadt, 46, 47. 190) Arnold, 209. -87- transfers, etc in Geri:ian cities and icund v.'ide variation in the ratio between the value cf the buildings and the figure of the ground rent. Ke found cases where tt.e value of the building was not tv/ice the figure of the ground rent, other cases in which it was a thousand times as nuch.^^'l) Concerning the value of real property as an investment little information has been brought to light. Sberstadt speaks of people v/ho regularlv let houses to others as early as the thirteenth century»192l and if this was done, there must have been a profit in it. In England the letting of houses was probably not so profitable, for from the earliest times the "land ovmer in the country or house owner in the city made all permanent improvements and did all repairs. 193) Rogers cites the case of town property owned by ITew College that should have given a revenue of 45 L 9s 6d in 1453, but which, because of repairs and other expenses, returned to the College only 3 L 6s . He says that the possession of house property during the fifteenth century and for more than two and a half centuries thereafter was not the source of profit that it has since become. Real Estate Business . In German cities there were people regularly engaged in the bus iness of buying and selling real estate, and there was soiue speculation in land when it was changed over from agricultural to urban use. for it v/as clearly recognized that there was an increment in value and this was regularly counted upon, though after the land passed into urban use no further increment could be secured, due to the system of fixed ground rents and separation of property in land from property in buildings . 194 j Conclusion - Transition. It would be interesting, if time permitted, to trace these points through the period of transition, through the great changes that took place in the sixteenth century, when the medieval tov/ns , having had their day, either were trans- formed to meet new conditions or fell into unimportant positions in the ranks of cities. The walls and fortifications were no longer useful in an age of gunpov/der and cannon, the gilds with their narrow regulations were out of date in a commercial world that stretched across the Atlantic, in which nations instead of cities contended for supremacy. Some of the old tovms adapted themselves to new conditions and maintained their importance, but the story of urban life in the sixteenth century is that of the grov/th of new industrial centers in tne suburbs or on manorial estates rather than of any increased prosperity in the towns organized according to the old model. 195) The great day of the medieval tovm v/as over - it must becom.e a new tov/n with a new organization or sink into insignificance. ISl) Arnold, 209. 192) Eberstadt, 46. 193) J.E. Thowld Rogers, Economic Interpretation of History (:^ev/ York, 1888). 1S8. 194) Eberstadt, 46. 195) Cunninghaia, Outlines , 68; Gibbins, Ind. In Eng . 146-148. -88- INSTITUTE FOP. RESEARCH IN LAND EC0N0!1ICS UHBAN LAND ECONOMICS Selection of Urban Sites R. il. "Whifbeck, A.B. Professor of Geography University of Wisconsin "UNDER ALL, THE LAND" "My own conviction has long teen that the land question far transcends any re- stricted field of economi-S and tha.t it is fundamental to national survival and national welfare. It is truly a problem calling for statesnanship of the broad- est type." - ProfesFor Frank: A- Fetter. larch 14, 1922. THE UHBAN SITE AS RELATED TO COl.OrEP.CE Professor Sly: Ve come to the selection of the urban site in our course and Professor "VilhitTDeclc has very kindly responded to the invitation to talk to us this week on that subject. I know you all are going to appreciate v/hat he has to say. PROEESSOR VMITBECK: My interest in this subject arises from a geographic interest and ray discussions will be raainly built around geographic concepts. 1. American cities have no long historical past as European cities have. The grov/th of existing European cities has been accel.erated or retarded by an endless series of political and historical influences. American cities have almost no past. They have all gror/n up in response to very much the same influences and they are among themselves far more h- .ogeneous than European cities. There are variations among them, but these variations are within relatively narrow limits. 2. All .American cities of much consequence have grown up in response to tv/o sets of geonomic forces which may be termed (l) the commercial, and (2) the industrial* 3. State capitals are usually located by other influences, usually the demand for centrality; and a few cities (Atlantic City, Los Angeles) for special reasons. 4. Host American cities that ha.ve had a vigorous grov/th owe that grov/th to the same general causes; they are either (l) at focal points on natural routes of travel and traffic, or (2) they have become focal points in our railv/ay net. 5. Men collect in cities for (l) protection (in the past); (2) politics (not so much in the U.S.) (3) pleasure; (4) profit. 6. Nearly all American cities began as local centers for conducting buying-and-selling operations; centers for collecting and shipping the products of the region, and for receiving and distributing goods demanded by the region, — laiddlemen's centers. 7. Sites favorable for such a,ctivities were: (a) advantageous points along the v/ater courses used by explorers, pioneers, and settlers: (b) points convenient for the fur trade '(Montreal, Detroit); (c) places selected for a,rmy posts, because of their strategic location (Chicago, Green Bay, Prarie du Chien); (d) foca-1 points along the lines followed by the "V/estward mcveraenf' (Pitts- burg, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Louis); (e) Junction points v/hich facilitated the collecting and forwarding (usua.lly by water) of pioneer products, and the retiirn distribution of needed -90- goods (points on the main v/aterY/ays ) . All of these fall into one general class, namely, focal points on routes of travel and tratiic. 8. Such sites v/ould be--for inland cities; (a) at the junctions of rivers (or valleys) --Albany. Pittsburg, St. Louis, Cincinnati; (b) At the mouths of streams f levying into the Great Lalces; places offering harbors for the loading and unloading of boats. Nearly every city or town of any size on the Lakes is at the mouth of a stream. (c) Many of the sites in (a) and (b) later became the termini of canals (Cincinnati, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Green Bay). (d) At important river crossings (fords, ferries, bridges), at falls or rapids (Louisville) o^^at important bends in rivers where overland routes branched off xrom the river (Cincinnati, Kansas City). (e) (Later) at places v/here •water routes and rail routes meet. Per sea coast cities: vfj Natural harbors--usually the drovmed mouths of rivers; (Duluth, Chicago, Buffalo); (g) Still better, if the river is itself a v/aterway of some importance (Philadelphia); (h) and still better, if the harbor is the natural water gate of a large and productive hinterland capable of supplying and absorbing a large volume of sea-borne goods (New York). BUT , the later and greater growth of American cities has been more largely due to industrial than to commercial factors. It is said that men do not build cities; they grow. There is a good deal of evidence that the statement is correct, for during the pioneer stage of our history many real estate promoters located so-called cities all through the Middle 17est and announced that they were to grow into metropolises. Land was sold on the basis that the promoters had picked the right spots and that cities would grow at these points. I do not knov; how many cities were so planned, but I do know that a great many were. A few were successful- Tlie mouth ol' the Milwaukee River was deliberately picked by tv7o competent men as a favorable site for a city, and it has justified the choice. Philadelphia v;as picked by advance agents sent out by miliara Penn and their choice has been justified. Against these I know of many sites which did not prove advantageous. ^at is it, then, that makes certain sites advantageous for the growth of cities? That depends somewhat upon the period of history with v;hich we are concerned. I have noted in my outline that men gather in cities for four main reasons: in the past it was for the purpose of protection, and this, I knov/, has been brou^-'.t out in previous lectures. In South America - in fact throughout Latin America - you v;ill find that the capi-'al city of the country is invariably the principal city, and that the pro- vincial capitals are usually the next most important. Latin America has not been developed by business men, but largely by a class that v.-e v/ould call politicians; and the cities are primarily political centers; although a few Latin American cities are out- growing this character; some, like Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Ayres, are becoming commercial centers. Secondly, then, men gather -91- in cities, in Bome countries, largely for political purposes - to hold office, to exercise authority, or to serve and wait upon those v;ho hold office and exercise authority; others desire to get into office and wish to he on the ground. Thirdly, men gather in cities for pleasure, and that of course applies to all cities. The drift tov/ard the city from the country Is quite largely a drift on the part of the people who think they can have a better time in the city. There are more opportunities for enjoyment as v:ell as for profit, and the drift tov/ard the city is in part inspired hy the desire for pleasure. But in America this is secondary. In America, I feel, the primary motive is profit. Men go to citie-^ to live because they provide the best opportunities for gaining wealth. I shall divide my discussion into two lectures, today dis- cussing primarily those forces belonging to commerce, and next Thursday those belonging to industry, for these, I think, are the two natural divisions from the geographer's point of view. My study of early American cities has led me to the conclusion that practically all of our cities originated for one and the same purpose. They v/ere centers for conducting buying-and-selling operations. The little pioneer posts for trading v/ith the Indians were in many cases the forerunners of these cities. In this part of the Isforthv/est quite a high proportion of our larger towns and cities began as fur trading posts; and the first traders selected these points because, by reason of the topography and stream line of the country, certain places were focal points, points upon which trails and waterways naturally converged. The trading post did not differ essentially in its purpose from modern cities. Sup-Dose T/e take the trading post established by Solomon Juneau ac Milwaukee. l/Vhy was it placed at Milv/aukee? The same question caji be applied to Green Bay, Frarie du Chien, and any other points. The goods v/hich the fur trader desired to sell had to come into the country from the East. They caiae in in quite large q.uantities; the large canoes and schooners brought them. It was desirable, therefore, tlaat these main trading posts be on water ddep enough to permit cargo canoes and schooners to land the goods. Secondly, the trails or waterT;ay5 connecting iiith the interior would naturally focus there, and the Indians and traders just naturally led toward these points. TShat are the natural channels along which such a trade would take place? Of course the waterwa^^ '. And so an Indian trading post was almost invariably at a place wnere water;^7ays met, either where tv/o strerxas joined or v/here a stream flowed into a lake, a junction point. That simple analysis made by the fur trader in the pioneer da,ys is essentially like that m£?,de by modern traders at Detroit, Cleveland, Ililv/aukee, or any other city. T/e locate the city at a focal point, a point at which routes converge. Later in our history when railroads became corunon, the railroads in the -92- level Miadle West could disregard topography somev/hat, and so a city likt; Minneapolis could grow large without "being on a deep "waterv/ay. But nearly all of our cities have grcwn up on waterways, and have been located where they are because of waterways, and in their early history grevj on the trade that waterways facilitated. Let us look at a map shov:ing the principal cities in the Middle West. Here is Cliicago , Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Louisville if you wish, Buffalo if you go a little farther east. Then besides those larger cities on important waterways, we have a few exceptional cases: Columbus, Indianapolis and Des Moines are exceptional and v;ere located because of centrality ■ they are capital cities that have grown to some size. These three cities are exceptional, for as a rule capital cities are located without reference to com- mercial advantages, centrality being the dominating idea, and consequently as a rule capital cities do not aiaount to much coiTomercially in America. Talcing out these three capital cities, none of v;hich is very large, it becomes evident that v;aterv/ays must have been influential in deciding the location of most American cities. One group of cities is the Mississippi-Missouri- Ohio group - the river tov/ns ; the other group - the Great Lake ports. The river tov/ns had the start. St. Louis was far more imr-^rtant than Chicago at one time; Cincinnati was far more im- portant than Cleveland; and Detroit was a post of importance a hundred years ago, but not an important city until more recently. The Mississippi River and its branches formed an important waterway dov/n to the time of the Civil War, and the cities located on that river had more business and grew more vigorously than any other cities except those on the Atlantic seaboaad. ITev; Orleans was one of our great cities in 1840 to 1860. Then there came a change. After the Civil War there v/as a decline in the importance of river navigation. It went down, down, down, until to-day river navigation is practically negligible. '7ith the decline in river traffic had come a decline in the importance of the river tov/ns, and in the last thirty years St. Louis has fallen far behind Chicago, Cincinnati far behind Cleveland. Pittsburg has changed from a coraruercial city to a manufacturing city, but it has not grown as fast as Cleveland and Detroit. The upper river cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis, have ceased almost entirely to have any connection with the river traffic; they have become manufacturing cities, the benefit as far as the river is concerned being from the ■•water power, not the waterway. As for Kansas City, it makes little difference whether the Missouri River is uhere or not. The Missouri Pdver no longer has any influence on the growth of Kansas City; At present the cities on the Great Lakes seem to many far more favorable locations than cities on the Mississippi River. All of the river cities and the lake ports have about the same principle involved; namely, they are focal points upon which traffic routes converge. Suppose we talce a specific case. Take -93- the shore of Lake Michifi;an. 'IThy is Milv/aukee located just where it is? T,hy not five miles further north or south? 'V.'hy are Racine, Kenosha, Hanitowoc, Green Bay at the particular sites that they are? We will recognise that they might also "be anyivhere on the shore and conceivahly might become focal points for land routes and water routes. V/hy has Milwaukee become the principal port in Wisconsin on Lake Michigan? A stream enters the lake there, (pointing to the map) the Milwaukee River, anotiier river, a very small one, the Menominee, and still a snaller one, the Kinnickinnic, comes in there. This converging of streams led Solomon Juneau to place his trading post there. But there must have been further advantages. Those rivers coming together form an interior harbor of some size. So Milwaukee offered a little harbor at the mouth of three con- verging streams, two of which have had some importance, the liLlwaukee arid the Menominee. That was not all. Had there been nothing more than that, tliere might never have been a city of any consequence at that point. At the same time that Milwaukee was bidding for business the other lake ports v/ere bidding. They v;ere seeking to liave the steamships from Buffalo and Detroit land at their harbors. But the steamships practically all made Milwavilcee their stopping point on the way to Chicago, and there were many steamships during the period 1840, 1850 and 1860. Several freight and passenger boats called at Milwaukee every day. Because of the superior ha-^bor at that particular point these steamship lines selected that as their point of call. Immigrants lariced there. Then sprang up a second group of lines of traffic, namely those into the interior, and out from Milwaukee there spread fan-like trails, roads and plank roads — all focusing upon this lake port. They were built to focus there because the best steamship service was provide-^, there. So for a number of years Milwaukee v/as the focal point for a half dozen important roads leading back into the hinterland. A map of Milv/aukee shows the old roads, some south, some north, and some toward Madison. They are still the trunk highv/ays of the region. They viiere built to reach the farming districts, to bring in the farming products to this point at v^ich land routes met water routes. Y/hat is true of Milwaukee is true in a general sense for all these cities on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River and the branches of the Mississippi River. They are focal points where land and water routes meet. Take the specific case of Chicago. 'Tiy is Chicago just where it is? Anybody looking at the raap of the United States, \^ould say that ov/ihg to the geography of the Middle West a city of importance ought to grov/ up at the south end of Lake Michigan- Chicago is several miles to the north of that. Again a simvle matter! Into the lake at Chicago comes a small ri\'-er, the Chicago River. Its head lays close to the head of another river, the Illinois, that flo'jvs into the Missis^sippi . The Chicago and the Illinois Rivers were important canoe routes in the pioneer days. It was the best portage route from the Great Lakes to the Southern Mississippi. Ye had a similar route in Wisconsin-- from the Fox River to the Portage Canal, across to the Wisconsin River. This was important -94- for a \vhile and gave Green Bay high hopes. Green Bay was quite sure at one tirae that it v/as going to pass Chicago. Read the old newspapers and you find that there was no doubt that this city was destined to be the great city of the "^est, because the people of Green Bay thought that the Fox-'^.'i scons in v/aterway was the best route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi and hence that their town v;ould have to be the great outlet of the West. The portage and the canoe route specifically determined the location of the site of Chicago. I want to nake, then, the distinction betv;een what may be called the general or regional aite on the one hand and the specific or local site on the other. The regional site would be satisfactory for Chicago anyivhere at the southern end of Lake Michigan, and it would not make much difference v/here it v;as located. But the specific site of Chicago was determined by the location of the small river. So v;ith Milv/aukee. Passing to point 7 in the outline (l have covered previous ones in a somev/hat general way) v;hat are the favorable sites for these activities that we call trade? I said at the outset that I believe substantially all our cities v/ere located at points suited for buying- and- selling operations. I v/ant to expand that a little, and impress the fact that that is just what a city is, no natter whether it is a manufacturing or a commercial city. It is a place where men gather to buy and sell. Commonly we think of buying and selling as dealing in commodities. Men buy and sell two classes of things - commodities and services; and the buying and selling of services is just as important as the buying and selling of commodities. "Why do manufacturers nearly always select a city in which to build a plant? Is it because they can buy commodities mpre cheaply in a big city? Not necessarily. It costs just about as much to get the commodities in Milwaukee as it would to get them in Oshkosh or Waukegan. It is not because manufacturers can buy materials more cheaply in a city like Milwaukee, but because in cities they can buy services to better advantage. You can buy many kinds of services that you cannot buy in a small tovm. A manufacturer needs an infinite variety of services and of goods, but he locates in the city primarily becaiise in the city only can he get the variety and kinds of services that he desires. Analyze this for a moment, "^tiat does a manufacturing plant need? A variety of forms of labor, not only enough for its needs but a reservoir to be drawn upon. It needs banking service. At certain seasons of the year it needs to borrov/ heavily It needs transportation services, not only to convey goods in and out, but also to transport laborers to and from the plant; street car service; power service; v/ater service; police service. All kinds of skilled laborers, carpenters, plumbers, painters and machinists j and so one can go through the v/hole list and readily see that the manufacturing plant needs to buy services as well as materials. It cannot get the variety and quality of service in a small town -95- that It gets in a large town, because those who have service to sell go to a good market with their services. Where ^o t^\^^^^ surgeons, la^vyers. and financiers gravitate? To the city; because there they can sell their service to the best advantage. The city then becomes a focal point where those who have services to sen go and those who v/ant to buy services go. Many of our cities have grown prosperous. Clearly then, it is not just one, two, or three points that are naturally locai centers for trade. There are many such .points, but they all poss- ess essentially the same fundamental advantages. To be specific, what are some of the points at which these currents of trade will converge and at which the market place will be placed, and by the market place I mean the place where men buy and sell everything, services as well as materials'? Naturally these market places ought to be where the greatest number of people pass, because it is true that only v;ith a large number of people and a large tralfic can a large business be built up. So I have listed under point 7 quite a number of different kinds of cities- I need not go over these - they are familiar to you. I have summarized point 7 by. the statement that all of these sites fall into one general class, namely, focal points on routes of travel and traffic For inland cities such aites v/ould be, first of all, at the junctions of rivers. It is not essential that the river be large, but the valley is important. Take the case of the Mohawk Valley entering the Hudson River at Albany. The Mohawk River was not very important, but the Mohawk Valley is the gate-way of the East. It is the only land in the eastern highland low enough for a canal between the sea and the Great Lakes, and because Nev/ York possessed this valley, Hew York was able to build the canal which joined the sea with Lake Erie. Pennsylvania tried to build a canal from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, but failed; Virginia tried to build a canal to the Ohio River, but got as far as the Allegheny Mountains and stopped. But the Mohawk Valley made it possible for New York to build the canal. One time the rivers were highly important in determining the growth of cities; later in the days of railroads the valley may be more important than the river. For example, most people do not think of Cincinnati as being the junction of valleys. It is my feeling that Cincinnati's growth is largely dependent upon the particular site of the city. Those of you who know the city will know that there is a deep valley. Mill Creek Valley, coming_ in_ from_ the north, and another extends to the south in Kentucky. Cincinnati then is at the crossing point of the Ohio River and an important north-south valley. That valley caused the canal from Toledo to meet the Ohio at Cincinnati. The city also had a second advantage in the early days, nai'aely, at a big bend in the river. Immigrants coming down the Ohio, at that point left the river in many cases and began a land journey, because to continue down the river led^ them away from thej.r destination; the big bend made a natural point -96- for leaving the river. So the combination of conditions -- the Ohio River, the valley of Mill Creek and the "big bend -- contri*- buted in making Cincinnati an important early city. But now these factors are of less importance to the city and those advantages are of less value. Again crossing places are sites favorable to the growth of river towns. Suppose you think of a river, a pretty good sized river, that could not be crossed readily in pioneer days- Take two points, say, fifty miles apart; perhaps there was only one place where the river could be forded; that would become a converging point and pioneer trails would converge toward it. Such a point afforded the site for a town in the early days. Go back to England and you will find fords a common site for tov/ns, and the names of many cities have the ending ford , because, before days of bridges and ferries, fords were important. Sometimes a ferry was a converging point instead of a ford, and later a bridge, perhaps. Then many roads v/ould still focus on that point, to cross the river. Sometimes rapids or falls in a river became a factor in building up a town. You have that in the case of Louisville. For the most part the Ohio is free of rapids, but at Louisville there are rapids of importance. So boats going up or dovm the Ohio usually had to unload their cargoes and carry goods around the rapids and then reload. This break in transportation made Louis- ville a stopping place, and Louisville ov;es its position due to that break in traffic. \7ith the development of our railway net, all other influences have become secondary to railroad influences; but railroad builders in general chose to run their lines to those cities v/hich had already shown causes for vigorous grov/th. Our railroads in the Middle ¥est date from 1840, perhaps a little later, 1850. litany of our cities already had a good start, and the railroads selected those cities v;hich had proved themselves to be business getters; and so in general the railway netv;ork has simply intensified the growth of earlier centers of trade. I have discussed so far cities located on the interior. I want to speak briefly of cities on the Atlantic coast. 'Vtoat has given life and energy to the coast cities? Does the principle involved differ from the principle involved in the "West? Hot at all. The difference is simply this. On the coast, cities on particularly good harbors were made focal points just as Milv/aukee or Chicago were and the steajaship lines of the ocean con- verged at these points just as the lake steamship lines converged at Milwaukee and Chicago. If the harbor besides being a good harbor, had a navigable river flowing into it, like the Hudson, then that harbor had a double advantage. If, moreover, this valley vi/as the natural waterway or gateway from the hinterland to the coast, then the city at the mouth of this river had the -97- best advantage of all. And New York City had that triple ad- vantage -- a harbor at the mouth of a navigable river ^which v/as a gateway for a rich hinterland. And because Ne-vv York had a triple advantage, it got the Erie Canal and through it a tremen- dous flow of traffic from the west. This built up the city of New York at the time when Philadelphia and Boston were competitors and it gave Nev/ York a lead which the other cities have never been able to overcome. At the present time you hear nothing but com- plaints about the service at the Nev/ York harbor, especially when the St. Lawrence waterway is being talked about. Everybody who wants to advance the St. Lawrence project tells you of the wretched conditions at New York harbor; yet in spite of that New York handles more than half of all the foreign trade of this country. New York gets this traffic because, back in the period when the canal was everything. New York became the established focal point at which steamship lines of the whole v;orld centered; whether the steamships come from Cape Tovm or Shanghai or Liverpool or Genoa or Lisbon or Rio de Janeiro, they are pretty sure to go to New York. Ships go there because in the past New York has become the established and recognized focal point for ocean trade, and ship masters knov; that at New York they are most sure to get return cargoes, and shippers from the interior know they can get frequent sailings, and so shippers from the Middle West put up with the disadvantages of New York because at New York they can get the most frequent service to all parts of the world. Suppose, the Alxis -Chalmers people have twenty-five shipments to go to twenty-five different parts of the world. They will send their goods to New York, because there only they can get a quick service to every part of the world. So it becomes advantageous to con- centrate the foreign trade of a country at one or tv/o or three points rather than distribute this foreign trade over a dozen ports. And the tendency throughout the world is tov^ard con- centration of ocean traffic at a few points in each country. Finally my last statement on the outline. "BUT, the later and greater growth of American cities has been more largely due to industrial than to commercial factors." And next Thursday I shall take up the discussion of those influences which belong to the industrial sites. -98- March 16, 1922. THE URBAN SITE AS RSL.\T3D TO WiMJPACTURIHG • The General or Rep:ional Site . 1. The major influence in the grov;th of modern American cj t.i no is m anufacturing -- the grov/th of factories and mills employing great numbers of men. 2. Successful manufacturing in a given place in addition to able management, involves (a) the economic assembling of materials; (b) the availability of labor; (c) ability to obtain power at reasonable cost; (d) an elastic supply of capital for permanent and for seasonal needs; (e) fair cost of land and non-burdensome taxes; (f) good transport facilities for distribution of products. Many sites offer these advantages, hence v;e have many prosperous cities . 5. Cities tend to specialise in certain lines of manufacturing for various reasons; (a) tradition or early start (textile centers in Hev; England); (b) special labor conditions (silk centers of U.J. and Penn.j; (c) nearness of raw materials (packing centers of Middle V/est, (Minneapolis); (d) important mining centers (Scranton, But.e Binaingham) ; (e) easy access to a large consuming population including facilities for export (eastern cities generally). 4. Tlie larger the number of advantages possessed by an urban site, the more its growth is stimulated, but good transportation is essential in all cases. Inland water transportation, except on Great Lakes, has ceased to be important. 5. In general, manufacturing concerns locate in cities because they require a constant varied line of services which can best be secured in large centers of population. 6. There is a marked tendency to locate new manufacturing plants just outside of large cities because of lower cost of land and lov/er taxes. THE SHEGIPIC OR LOCAL SITE. 1. If the general or regional site is highly favorable, as it is in the case of Hew York and Chicago, the local or specific site may have many disadvantages , and yet maybe dominantly advantageous. New York has serious local problems, especially problems of transportation, and the site of Chicago was a swamp, yet they have prospered beyond all other American cities. 2. Local sites that are dominantly advantageous may have a number of serious disadvantages, and yet the city may prosper, (a) Pittsburg -- narrow valleys and rivers cause great congestion -99- of railway lines. ("b) Nev; Orle?.ns--very lov;; serious problem vath water sunply, sevage system, foundations, "basements, etc. (c) Seattle--steep hills and lack of level land for business section, (d) San Francisco--on a peninsula, preventing direct access by most railroads. ;aDv.^jttageous peatuees of local sites 1. Room to grov;; preventing the undue rise of land values in the city (Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit). 2. Attractive upland section for residences and parks (Cincinnati ) . 3. Lowland section with inexpensive land for factories and railway yards (consider svyarapy section of Milvraukee and Newark). 4. Good drainage features (consider the sewage problem of Chicago and New Orleans). 5- Pure and inexpensive water supply (Great Lakes cities). 6. Agreeable and invigorating climate (contrast northern and southern cities). 7. 'J7ater power (Minneapolis, Rochester, Paterson) . THE URBAN SITE ALTD LAITO VALUES 1. Land values in general increase with the grov;th of the city in response to law of demand and supply. 2. In general the price of Urban land depends either (a) upon its earning power (store and office building sites), or (b) upon its pleasure yielding pov/er (desirable residence sections). Con- sider Madr^on's "Square" and its lake front land. 3. High land values lead to skyscrapers and apartment houses, to suburban development and better means of local transportation. 4. The streets upon which land in a business section has its frontage largely determines its market value. 5. The future value of a given tract of urban land is impossible to forecast; numerous factors that can not be foretold v/ill decide the market value. In the previous lecture I took up some of the natural or geographical features of a region v;hich tends to locate centers of buying and selling. I pointed out that in the United States all cities are young and all have had about the same history; that one particular influence has been dominant in deciding whether cities should prosper or stagnate. That those -100- cities which offered advantagecus sites for buying and selling are the cities which have developed and grown important. As I said to you in my first lecture, I viev; tliese things from the standpoint of a geographer and my analysis is of course that of one who sees things through the eyes of the geographer rather than the economist. I do not for a moment want to magnify the importance of geographical influences. Ily emphasis upon geographical factors is simply because my knowledge and interest lie in this field. I divided cities into two groups — (l) commercial and (2) industrial — out gave my opinion that all of our cities, or practically all, began as comraercial centers, places for buying and selling goods and services; bu"^ I stated at the end of my talk that the later growth, and the greater growth, of cities has been brought about by the growth of manufacturing, and so far as the number of people concerned goes, manufacturing is much more responsible for bringing to a city great numbers of people than coi'nmerce is. Conimerce does not require great numbers. All the strictly coraiaercial activities of Milv/aukee, for example, would not require a great number of people. It is v;hen vie establish manufacturing centers v/here a single pla.nt enploys 5,000, 10,000, and in one case 50, COO employees, that we begin building up cities on a large scale. It seems "to me then that we must view the urban site primarily as it serves the needs and demands of industry. But industry and commerce alv/ays go side by side. There is no strictly manufacturing city v/ithout commerce; there is no strictly commercial city without industry. But a city is sonetimes dominantly one or the other. For example, Gary, Indiana, is dominantly a manufacturing city, -lAiiile Galveston, Texas, is dominant- Ij a commercial city. But the majority of cities combine their activities, and we don't need to separate industries from commerce. Now, of course, the growth of the city and the expansion of its interests do not rest solely upon industry and commerce. There are great numbers of services to be performed v/hich are neither commercial nor industrial. I have no figures in mind, but I suspect that the total number of people in Chicago who are engaged in_ per- forming services that are neither strictli^- commercial nor strictly industrial, would be about as large as the total number of people engaged in manufacturing ajid commerce, because all the wants of these people enga,ged in commerce and industry must be tai^en care of and there are multitudes of enterprises, large and small, concerned mth services private and public, small and large, and those people vdao are engaged in performing legal service* medical service, electrical service, pliomber service, and every other kind of service is very large. I want to run over the points in the outline somewhat rapidly and reserve the lat'oer part of the hour, perhaps the last half of the hour, for lantern slides which illustrate some of the points v;hich I have brouglit out. I will shew you slides of cities in this country and abroad and perhaps as much benefit will be derived from -101- :o them as from the discussion of these more or less obvious points. I pointed out under the second heading in the outline, that successful ma.nufacturing in a given place, in addition to ahle management, involves such other factors as (a) The economical assemhling of materials. You would not locate a manufacturing center in Nevada, as it would cost too nuch to assemhle materials for most industries. You would not locate it in northern Maine unless it v/ere a paper or a lumber center. You would not locate it in southern Texas. Men locate industries with regard to the cost of assembling material. Usually we say v/e locate the factory near the source of raw material, but distance must be thought of in terms of cost, not in terms of miles- For instance, the iron mines of Minnesota are near Pittsburg. On the map they are 1,000 miles away; but they are near Pittsburg because of cheap transportation, and iron ore can be brought tc Pittsburg at a cost which is relatively small, because most of the long trip is taken on the Great Lakes. The iron ore is transported in specially designed vessels to carry this kind of_ cargo, and to load and unload cheaply. Distance from rav; material is measured in terras of cost. (b) The availability of labor. The availability of labor does not mean simply numbers of v/orl-cmen. Suppose for instance, that you v<'ere to interest yourself in the manufacture of pottery. You decided to put money into a pottery. You say Madison is a, delight- ful city to live in and I think I will locate my pottery here. First, there are no suitable materials 'near at hand and, second, 8Jid more important, there are no skilled potters in Madison. Go to Oshkosh or Detroit, and you would have the same difficult^r. The best place to establish a pottery and succeed is a center where this specialized industry is already located. There are only three or four places in the country where an abundant supply of this skilled labor can be found and where the industry is already established. Or suppose you decide to establish a glass-blowing factor^'-. You v/ould have the same labor difficulty. Glass blowers are only at the centers where glass blowing is ca/rried on. So v/hen a city becomes specialized in a certain line of industry, future plants are almost forced to locate at the same city or nearby. 7ihy could we not go to East Liverpool and persuade some of the potters to leave East Liverpool and go to Madison? Maybe you could; but you would be at the mercy of these persons. They could hold you up. So if you v/ant to have some competition in your labor supply and not be at the mercy of one small group you must locate where there is a surplus of this kind of labor. The less skilled in- dustries are not quite so easily affected by the labor supply as the specialized ones mentioned. There is, therefore, a tendency in the cities to increase the kind of industries that are already established. The thing grov>?s by a sort of budding process. Take, for instance, again the pottery industry, which I happen to kno^ at first hand. Alm.ost all pottery factories in Trenton now existing are offshoots of the older potteries. Foremen and managers who -102- formerly worked in the old potteries got hold of capital and started rev; plants. T^ere did they start? They started m the city vrhere they live, and so the potteries in T.enton grew from one to ten, fifteen, thirty. But ten miles out of the city of Trenton there are few if any potteries. The tendency is to multiply inthfi city where the skilled lalDor exists, where the experienced . labor is. For the same reason there are few cotton mills in the West. You may ask yourselves the question, llhy are there no important cotton mills in the T/est or liiiddle ¥est? Could we not run cotton mills here? \je certainly could. It is no more difficult to ^ring raw cotton here than to New England. There is plenty of labor here. But we have not the right kind of labor. The tendency is for labor to remain where the industry is specialized. (c) The ability to obtain power at reasonable cost. Power is obtained from coal, petroleum, water or electricity. Certain in- dustries like paper, cotton and flour mills have always clung to v/ater power, and you find the country over that these three industries are very largely located vhere water power is available. Some other industries have grown up irrespective of water power and hardly ever use it. a few industries vise natural gas and locate where natural gas is found. But the great fuel in use is coal ^ and it has been stated that eighty-three per cent of the mechanical power generated in the United States is generated by coal. (d) An elastic supply of capital for permanent and for seasonal needs. Not only are the manufacturing cities concerned^ with labor and raw materials and power, but they are concerned with capital. Capital flows so easily, however, that there is not much to be said about that. If the security is good, capital will go to northern Michigan, northern Maine, or southern Texas. (e) Fair cost of land and non-burdensome taxes. The cost of land and taxes may be a large factor. Land may become so valuable, as it has on Manhattan Island, that it almost forces people to locate outside. It is possible, of course, to mal:e land earn so much that it will bear a very high cost. You can construct buildings thirty or forty stories high and defy the cost of land. It is possible to build high lofty buildings and lease the_ floors to small manufacturers and obtain an income that will justify the cost of the land. But these things can only be done in a limited number of industries. You can't manufacture locomotives, _ farm machinery, Bucyrus shovels, etc., in such places. There is a • limited range of manufacturing that can be done in congested centers of population. In general, manufacturing requires ground space and lots of it. But manufacturing generally finds it advantageous to locate as near as possible to centers of population. If they cannot locate in the center they locate as nearly as possible in the center of population for reasons discussexi last Tuesday. There is quite a strong tendency always for new manufacturing plants ol large size to locate just outside the city. The Census of 1-^10 -103- made a special report on that question and presented maps of many cities showing that around the outer margin of all the hig cities are located many important plants. They have gone just outside of the city for the deliberate purpose of obtaining as many city advantages as possible and still escape paying the high cost of land and higli taxes in the city. An interesting case is in Detroit where the great Ford plants and the surroundings are still a separate village. Hamtramck is the name of the village, J believe. Forty thousand or more people live in this village, entirely suxrounned by Detroit. There are two municipalities, one a village BXid one a city, and both of them independent, but surrounded by the city of Detroit. A similar case exists in Boston, where an independent municipality is entirely surrounded by Boston because the people living there have refused to be annexed. Generally, by adjusting the tax you can induce these suburban tovms to come into the city, but sometimes you can't. So you have this growth, this marginal growth, of industries around the cities, for the purpose of saving the cost of land and escaping high taxes. (f) Good transportation facilities for distribution of products. AS the city grov;s and land in the center becomes more expensive, automatically it pushes people out. You have a repellant force and there is constantly developing around tlie margin of the city new suburban plats. That in turn calls for better trans- porta-^ion. It is commonly said in Madison that one reason the price of land is so high in Madison is because we have not been able to get the street railv/ay company to build out into the suburbs, and the suburbs already built have had to depend upon one kind of conveyance or another and so such suburbs are not attractive. In some cities like New York expansion in certain directions is out of the question. If you expand lov;er ITew York you must go across to Nev/ Jersey. On the other hand, Detroit, Milwaukee, or Philadelphia have no limitation to their growth on t\vo or three sides 3,nd they can spread and spread and add new plats and keep the cost of land from soaring, provided they can get good transportation facilities. Under No. 3 1 have spoken of different types of industries. This is perhaps self- explaining and I will pass on without discussi on. 4. The larger the number of advantages possessed by an urban site, the more its grov;th is stimulated, but good transportation is essential in all cases. 5. In general, manufacturing concerns locate in cities because they require a constant varied line of service which can best be secured in large centers of population. Point 6 I have discussed already. « -104- THE SEECIJ^^C OK LOCAL SITE. 1. It the general or regional site is highly favorable, as it is in the case of ITev? York and Chicago, the local or specific site may have many disadvantages, and yet nay be dorninantly ad- vantageous. Nev; York, for example, is built on an island, and has a serious transportation problem. It is a splendid site for a small city and a very bad site for a big city, and yet despite the disadvantages its general advantages are so great that it goes on grov;ing despite local disadvantages. Chicago v.'as a swamp, a miserable place to build a city and New Orleans has a poor local site, but both have grown because their genera,! sites are so favorable that the poor local sites could be ignored. 2. Local sites that are dorninantly advantageous may have a number of serious disadvantages, and yet the city may prosper. Take the case of Seattle; people chose to locate there v;hen it was a small place. "THien the city had grov/n to have a population of 150,000 there was not level ground enough for the business district, and the cit^; v/ent to the tremendous expenditure of v/ashing away hill after hill to make a level business center in Seattle. In certain parts of Chicago if you dig down you will find four or five feet of made ground. Most of Chicago is built on made ground, and in many cities there are thousands of acres of made ground, made partly as mere dumps for city refuse, but in other places at large expense. Frequently a city that has a low, svampy district in a disagreeable area which everyone avoids in the early history of the city and it is left unoccupied but later when land becomes very valuable, the rejected place still remains unoccupied and offers a district for railroad yards and terminals which v/ould cost millions if it had not been avoided and later become available for railroad terminals and yards and manufacturing lands at a mouest price . The remaining points that I desire to make are given in the outline and need not be developed at greater length. (See outline at beginning of this lecture). -105- [NSTITUTE POR RESEARCH IK LAKD ECONOIIICS URBAN LAUD ECONOMICS Land Values G. B. L. Arner, Ph. D. Institute for Research in Land Economicc "UlTOER ALL, THE Li^JID" "Uy o'.vn conviction has long been that the land question fai' transcends any re- stricted field of economics and that it is fundamental to national survival and national -v^elfare. It is truly a problem calling for statesmanship of the broad- est type." - Professor Pranl: A. Fetter. LECTUK5 I. The Growth of Land Values . In this first lecture I want to impress upon you the com- pleteness v^fith which the conditions of urban life broke with the past as a result of the Industrial Revolution of the last half of the Eighteenth Century. One hundred years is a very brief period in the history of the world, but in the Nineteenth Century the type of city which had developed gradually through ten thousand years suddenly disappeared, leaving only a fev/ pictur- esque survivals in the backwaters of civilization. The city of 17 50 was not strikingly different from the city of the Roman Empire, but the city dweller of 17 50 would be as completely lost and bewildered in the city of 1922 as if he had been suddenly transported to another planet in which the course of social evo- lution had been different from the beginning. You are familiar with the descriptions of the old type of city with its narrow crooked streets, its picturesque buildings, its inconveniences and indescribable filth. Perhaps the only large city in Europe which still retains its essential medieval conditions is Constantinople, which even now with its dog scavengers and its degenerate population is perhaps cleaner than it was in the reign of Justinian. In some of the less progressive cities of Spanish Aiaerica medieval conditions also survive and even in our ovm soutli there are many out of the v;ay villages in which there are no attempts at sanitation and in which pigs run at large on the streets and can be heard grunting under the floors of the schoolhouse, while classes are being heard in the room above. It is hard to realize that these conditions were familiar to our own great-grandparents v;herever they may have lived. Prints less than a hundred years old show pigs running at large on Broadv/ay in New York. In 1840 there was no city water supply in ITev/ York and special assessments were levied for wells and pumps at street corners. Garbage v/as collected in dog carts and hauled up Fifth Avenue to what is noi* Central Park where it isras fed to thousands of pigs and chickens icept by a nondescript tribe of squatters v;ho lived in shacks on land which large real estate owners were holding for future development. The old city v/as a trading center or a center of governmental activities. It grew slov/ly and was never large in our modern sense. \Je know very little about the population of ancient cities, but it is safe to say that most of the population esti- mates are far too large. There is on record a poll tax enumer- ation which shows that London in 1377 had a population of about 25,000. In the same year York, the second city in England, had about 11,000 inhabitants.!) There v/ere undoubtedly some larger 1) A.?. T;eber - The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century . -107- cities in southern Europe and Asia of v;hich we have no satisfactory- population estimates. Then to this slow moving and had smelling Wo rid came a series of great invantions and diecoveries. Old h3.iiiicr.^,:'r, rv.ithods suddenly became obsolete, factories were built, and the people crowded to the cities as factory operate ves. A new type of city developed, and the old cities v.ere transformed. R-ipid corcrcuni- cation was developed and improved metiiods of ajrriculture made it possible to feed a vastly larger population T/ri.h no additional labor on the land- After the l^apoleonic period, Europe v/as free from long devastating v;ars for a hundred years. Discoveries in sanitation decreased the dangers or" pestilence and lov;ered the death rate, so that the population suddenly bec-'^n to increase more rapidly than ever before- This inrrtrased population v/as not needed on the land, so it was absorbed by the industrial cities and overflov/ed from Europe to populate the ITew ¥orld. In the United States the rapid growth of cities has been particularly strii:ing. Cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Los Angeles have grovm uo from straggling villages within tlie lifetime of men still living. In 17 90 only 3.14 per cent of the American population lived in cities. In 1320 over 50 per cent were city dwellers. :".n 1800 there v.'ere only six cities in the United States, Philadei-ohia wxth 69.000.. Vevi York with 60,000, Baltimore v/ith 26,000. Boston vath 25,000, Charleston with 20,000, and Galen with 9,000. l^ow there are 67 cities in the United States, v/ith a populai:ion of over 100,000. But this phenomenon has not been confined to the United States. Previous to the nineteenth century there v^as probably never a city in the world with a population of a million. London first reached the million point in loll, and Paris not until 1846. In 1800 London, Paris, Vienna,, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Constantinople were perhaps the only European cities which had more than 200,000 population. Calcutta and Madras in India were estimated at 800,000 each. ITo satisfactory estimates csn be made of Chinese and Japanese cities, but it if- quite certain that none had a million inhabitants. The largest city in the Western Hemisphere v;as Pvio de Janeiro with 125,000. This concentration in cities has been accompanied by a vast increase in social wealth. There was a greater surplus than ever before. YJealth accumulated with unprecedented rapidity, even more rapidly than population. This new v/ealth v;as not equitably distributed, but the old idea of the rich growing richer and the poor poorer is true only in a relative sense. The poor in every country, at least before 1914, were better off than ever before in the history of the v;orld. The minimum standard of living has risen tremendously. Even the most poverty stricken family rightly insists upon a standard of living far above that of the middle class city dweller of the past ages. This increased standard of living and comfort, much of it enjoyed by all, simply because they live in a city which requires these Standards and providesmeans for -108- maintaining them, is really an increase in tlie wealth of the individual family. On the otlier hand, the rich have certainly grown richer. In every srnall town now there are well-to-do men who would have oeen considered faliulously rich a centurj'' ago. As recently as 1855 the Nev/ Yoric Sun published in paunphlet form a list of "The V/ealthiest Citizens of the City of New York," con- taining "the nanies of the most prominent Capitalists v;hose wealth is estimated at one hundred thousand dollars and upwards." Accord- ing to the list Y7.B . Astor was the v;ealthiest man in Nev; Yorlc with 36,000,000. V/.H. Aspinv;all, James Lennox, A,T. Stev/art and Stephen T/hitney v/ere the only others having $2,000,000 or more. The whole list contained about 1000 names. In 1920 more than 6,000 persons in New Yorl: State, of whom more than half were from New York City, admitted in their income tax returns incomes in excess of $50,000.^/ It is this growth in population and the increase in the social wealth that is responsible for the growth of land values in modern times. There is more competition for a given piece of desirable land and more men have the price to pay for it. The differential betv/een good land and poor, between a desirable site and ah undesirable one is enormously greater. A few vjeeks ago I saw a paper published by a single tax organization in wnich a certain statistician "after years of investigation" presented figures showing that the reason the vrorking people and the farmers had not enjoyed the full benefit of the vast savings in labor effected by the age of machinery, was that these savings had been absorbed by the land monopoly. He shov/ed a chart in which the land values v/ere pictured mountain high as compared v/ith vailues a hundred years ago. His figures were more or less accurate, but they told only a part of the story. The whole story is that all forms of wealth have piled mountain high and that land has shared in the general advance. In all the cities west of the Alleghenies it is obvious that practically all the land values which now exist have been created since the year 1800, for in that year there were in all the Mississippi Valley only a fev; trading posts. On the Pacific Coast there were only a few Spanish settlements. In the Atlantic Coast cities, however, modern city development was already starting in 1800, and in that year the assessors valued all real estate in the city, then only the Island of Ivlanhattan, at $18,696,27 0. ¥e have no means of knowing v/hat percentage of the true value this represents, or how much was land value apart from improvements. But it is fairly safe to assurae that the true value was somev/here between $30,000,000 and $60,000,000. Of this value at least half was undoubtedly in the land, making the land value of Manhattan Island in 1800 somewhere between §15. 000 ,000 and $40,000,000. Ve will assume that the value was $25,000,000. In 1850 the assessed valuation of the real estate on Manhattan Island was $207,000,000. L) World Almanac, 1921 - p, 423, -109- In the five year -oeriod 1850-54 a coraparison of sales with assessed valuations shows that iraproved real estate was valued for taxation at about 67 per cent of its selling price and that vacant land was valued at about 43 per cent. This would maicate real estate value of at least ^400,000,000, of which perhaps $250,000,000 was land value. In 1906 the value of land alone was $2,600,000,000 and a comparison of assessed valuations vath sales showed a ratio of 76, making the total land value $3,400,000,000. Ho other equal area of land (24.8 square miles j can show absolute increases in value to compare with trxis. Yet ii we consult a compound interest table we find that if Pather Knickerbocker had taken $25,000,000 in 1800 and investec. it at 5 per cent and each year reinvested his interest at the same rate he would have had 03,400,000,000 as early as 1901. In other woras. New York City land maintained an average rate of increase oi slightly less than five per cent for over 100 years. King s County (Brooklyn), which now has a population as great as tnat of Manhattan, had a population of only 5.740 in 1800 as compared with Few York's 60,565, and its total assessed valuation was only $1,800,000. By 1906 the land alone was worth $650, 000 ,00U. This is equivalent to about 5 l/2 per cent compound interest. The increase in land values in the outlying borouglis of Queens and Richmond was equivalent to about 4 l/2 per cent compound interest. The gross rate of increase in Western cities has been even greater because of the negligible land value at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There are undoubtedly cities in which not only the gross but even the net increase in value for many years v;as in excess of 5 per cent. But Trhen the full story is told a hundred years from nov; it is not certs.in that any one of them will show more constant increases than Manhattan from 1800 to 1905. It is very difficult to obtain satisfactory data on the growth of land values in any city. In only a few cities is the veilue of the land separated from tiiat of the buildings in tax valuation, and the ratio of assessed valuation to the real value varies all the v^ay from 25 per cent to 100 per cent. In Boston land has been separately valued for many years. The increase in value has been steady, but in thirty years it has hardly more than doubled. In lulilwaukee assessed land values increased from $74,000,000 in 1895 to $100,000,000 in 1910. In Seattle assessed land values increased from $70,000,000 in 1905 to .5205,000,000 in 1910. This was a typical boom period in v-Oiich speculation in land went beyond the bounds of reason and perha-ps .anticipated legitimate increases in value for years to come. Los Angeles has passed through two such land booms. In the first, about the year 1889, lots subdivided out of ranches miles away from the center of the city sold for prices e.bsurdly high. The boom collapsed suddenly v;ith ruinous effects a,nd the cit^^ passed through several years of depression in land values. In 1900 and 1901 lots were still selling belovf the prices of 1889 aa though the city had grown rapidly. A fev/ years later there wa,s another -110- boom, this time on a firmer basis of actual value, "but a.gain prices went beyond reason. It would be a. very interesting study to trace these grovang pains of tliis v/onderful city which in forty years has transformed itself from a squalid Ilexican tov;n to a rival in population and v;ealth of Boston, Baltimore, and St, Louis. Other examples of boom cities are Omaha, Nebraska and St. Joseph, Missouri, which were so anxious in 1900 to increase prices of real estate tliat the census enumerators counted the graves in the cemeteries in order to pad the population. The people in these cities v/ere far less enthusiastic in 1910 when an honest enumeration shov;ed no increase over the padded lists of ten years before. In this connection it is interesting to note some observations of Michel Chevalier, a distinguished French economist, who visited the United States in 1835:-'-'' "The unparalleled grov/th of some new tov/ns has turned the heads of the nation, and there is a general rush upon all points advantageously situated; as if before ten years three or four Londons, as, many Parises, and a dozen Liver- pools, were about to display their streets and edifices, their quays crov/ded with warehouses , and their harb.ors bristling with masts, in the American wilderness. In Hew York building lots have been sold sufficient for a population of two million souls and at Nev/ Orleans for at least a million. Pestilential marshes and naked precipices of rock have been bought and sold for this purpose In Louisiana, the quagmires, the bottomless haunts of the alligators, the lakes and cypress sv/amps, with ten feet of water and slime, and in the North, the bed of the Hudson with 20, 30, or 50 feet of water, have found purchasers. "Take a map of the United States; place yourself on the shore of Lake Erie, T.-hich tv/enty years ago was a solitary wilderness, ascend it to its head; pass thence to Lake St. Clair and from that Lake push on to the north, across Lake Huron, go forv^ard still, thread your vvay through Lake Michigan, s.nd advance southv/ard until the T/ater fails you; here you will find a little town bj'- the name of Chicago, one of the outposts of our indefatigable countrymen when they had possession of America. Chicago seems destined, at some future period, to enjoy an extensive trade, it will occupy the head of a canal, which is to connect the Mississippi with the lake and the St. Lavrrence; but at present it hardly nuinbers two or three thousand inhabitants. Chicago has in its rear a country'- of amazing fertility; but this country is as yet an uncultivated wild. IJevertlaeless the land for ten leagues round has been sold, resold, and sold again in small sections, not, however, e.t Chicago, but at Nev/ York, which by the route actually travelled is 2,000 miles distant. There you may find plans of Chicago lots numerous enough for 300,000 inhabitants; tha.t is more than any city in the New IJorld at present contains. More than one buyer, probably, will esteem himself fortunate if on examination ixe shall find not more than six feet of v/ater on his purchase." l) Society , Manners and Politics in the U.S. , p. 305 et seq. Specula,tions , 1835. -Ill- Another interesting devsioprasnt of the past quarter century has been the new industrial city, built "by a great corporation about a single industry. Perhaps the first was "Pullman, with its industrial feudalism which Professor Ely v;as the first to present in its true light thirty-five years ago. ?7ith all good intentions Mr. PullKian tried to build and maintain a model town in v/hich everybody would be good and happy, but in \ih.ich only the company officials would be entrusted with any governmental responsibility. The wreck of this plan in the great Pullman strike is another story. More interesting from our point of view is Gary. The story of the grov/th of values in land in Gary has been told by Professor Haig.l) As you knov;, Gary was a city by decree of the United States Steel Corporation. In 1906 tlie corporation bought 9,OC0 acres of marshland and sand dunes running seven miles along the southern end of Lake Michigan. This land was _ unsuited for agriculture and practically uninhabited, but as_ its potential industrial value had alrer.dy been recognized by others, the corporation was obliged to pay $7,200,000 for the tract, or ar average price of about $800 per acre. Old inhabitants said that at about the time of the Civil T/ar this land sold for Ol.OO an acre and in 1890 it was vrorth from $50 to $150 an acre. This tract was held and developed by the Gary Land Company, a Steel subsidiary. The remaining 9,749 acres of the present city of Gary was never under company ownership. It was worth from $50 to $75 an acre in 1906, making tlie total land value of the city in 1906 about $8,000,000, or, eliminating the land on which the plant v/as built, about $6,500,000- Profeosor Haig estimates that in 1915 this non-plant land was worth $33,500,000, an increase of $27,000,000. The total land tax paid in nine years was about $2,000,000. Street improvements cost $5,000,000 less $1,000,000 in delinquent assessments covered by bonds. The total carrying charge on tiie land without interest in nine years v/as, tlierefore, about $6,000,000, leaving a net increment of $21,000,000- Another study of city land values, although in a city of an entirely different .type , was that of Dr. Mewes, of Freiburg, in Germany, in 1904. ^^ The study covers forty years from 1863 to 1902, during which time the city increased in population from 19,000 to 61,500. Freiburg is not only a University tov.'n, but an industrial city as well. It is located in Baden at the edge of the Black Forest. The residential section extends up through three Black Forest Valleys, the Hflllenthal, the Bohrerthal and the Hezcer.thal. In these valleys the city has always enforced severe building restrictions Yhich have confined the expanding business interests to already congested inner sections of the city. These restrictions have kept land values down in the upper class residence sections and increased values in the lower class residence 1) Political Science ■Q.uarterly, 1917, vol. 32, p. 80- 2) Volkswirtschaftliche Abhandlungen der Badischen Hochschulen, 1905. -112- sections in the inner city. In 1898-1902 the average price of the upper class residence land v;as 24.5 ciarks per square meter, for niddle class residence land 40 maiics and for lower class residence land 59 marks. On the main ousiness street the mean land value in 1864-68 was 92.5 marks per square meter, in 1882-92, 207.5 markr, in 1893-97 299 marks, and in 1898-1902, 500 marks. Dr. Mewes analysis is made in great detail and with traditional German thoroughness, but unfortunately he does not tell us about the taxes and other carrying charges viiich would offset much of the value increment over the forty years covered by his study. The distribution of land values v/ithin a city is usually very uneven. One would naturally -expect values to be greatest in the business center of the city and gradually diminish until the site value raerged witli the agricultural value in the surrounding country. But unless a city is built on an open prairie, geographi- cal considerations will modify the values of land. The courses ^of rivers and streams and the contour of the land almost alv/ays modify the direction of city expansion. High land is more desirable for residence, v;ater fronts for warehouses and elevators, valleys and lov/lands for factories, lumber and stock yards. A more or less accidental location of a particular industry or group of industries may change the direction of city growth and modify land values. The Chicago stockyards iB a good example. The location of railways and transit lines affect profoundly the development of land values. Social considerations are tremendously important in determining lard values, liudi as we may deplore race discrimination it is an inescapable fact that a fev; colored families moving into a good residence neighborhood will immediately cut land values in half. The location of parks will change the whole course of land values. 'The most rapid value increases on record in New York City followed the laying out of Central Park. Building restrictions and zoning ordinances often modify values to a very great extent as we have already seen in the study of Preiburg. It is tiiese numerous elements of uncertainty which make land speculation fo dangerous. Large areas in ITew York City are worth much less now than they were twenty years ago for reasons which could not be anticipated by the ov.'ners. Not only is the growth of l?nd values uneven but in point of time the rate of growth is subject to wide variations. Periods of rapid increase in land- values are followed by periods of depression or stagnation during which general values are stationary or even fa,lling. Land values tend to follow the business cycle, Imt withsome interesting variations. Recently I have been working on an index number of land values for the Borough of Manliattan, based on a . comparison of sales with assessed valuations. This index is now practically complete for the past seventeen years- Taking 1913 as -113- the base year, tne values, subject to a few minor corrections, are as follows: 1904 102 1913 100 1905 108 1914 97 1906 105 1915 98 1907 109 1916 96 1908 104 1917 89 1909 104 1918 88 1910 110 1919 95 1911 103 1920 Ill n I 1912 101 1921 11 The increase of values in 1905 followed the opening of the original sub\my, which opened large areas of llanhattan as residence districts. The drop in 1906 was evidently the result of. the stock market panic of the fall of 1907, which forced many sales of real estate in the process of liquidation. Ta th renev^ed prosperity, values again rose; in 1911, however, the real estate was assessed at practically full value for the first time. This of course resulted in a material increase in the tax rate on full value and a corresponding fall in prices. During the v;ar new building practically stopped in Hev/ York as elsev;here on account of labor shortage and the high prices of building material. As a result the values of building rose while the land values remained low. But by 1920 rents v/ere forced to a new high level, making it again profitable to build, and we find an imciediate increase in land values to the hi^iest point in the city's history. This general increase, which follov/ed two years after the boom in general prices, was checked in 1921, but there has been no fall in values because rents are still high and there is still a shortage of housing. Less satisfactory evidence for earlier years based largely on the assessed valuation, checked by sales in a few years, in- dicates a land boom in the thirties follov;ed by a depression after the panic of 1837. A similar land boom followed the Civil War and was brought to an end by the panic of 1873, which cut speculative land values on i'ifth Avenue in half. The determination of the true value of land in studies of this sort is extremely difficult. Assessed valuations in the past have frequently been no better than v;ild guesses on the part of the assessor, checked in some cases v/hen they were unusus-lly high by court proceedings on the part of the land owner. In Nev; York the land owners who had influence witli the district leader were said to have been able to keep their assessed valuation down. In recent years, due la,rgely to the excellent vjork of Mr. Lav/son Purdy as President of the Tax Commission from 1906 to 1917, assessed valuations in Hew York have been a fairly good guide to the true values. Other cities are also improving their methods of c^ssessment, so that eventually it may not be necessary to go behind the assessor's reports in any v/ell administered city. As a result of this lack of accurate (].ata in regard to the growth of land values, -114- there is mudi popular misconception as to the rate of growth, and particularly as to the true investment value of land. We have pointed out in this lecture the changed conditions of urhan life whicli have resulted in vast increases in population and consequent increases in the value of urban land. We have seen, that tiie value of land is influenced "by a complexity of causes and that it fluctuates from year to year. In the following lectures we will take up the costs of land ownership under certain conditions, and shov; how these costs, often to a very large extent, offset even the greatest gross increments in the value of urhan land. ■ 115- luctubz II Land Values in Few York City- In this and the follovdng lectures I shall "be obliged to rely almost entirely on IJev; York sources. It might he hetter if I could discuss contemporary land values in some other American city in vihich conditions vmulji be more typical. But unfortunately v/e have not "been able as yet to extend our studies to otlier cities, and there is very little material available from other sources. However, Hew York has a universal interest as our largest city, and it is also of interest as the city in which land values are highest. And while New York is not entirely typical, I am sure that many of the conclusions which have been drawn from the study of Hew York land values v;ould be found to hold equally well for Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles or any other modern city. Since I shall be obliged to talk so much about Nev/ York it may be well at first to get the geographical background well in mind. As everyone knows, New York \7as originally confined to the lower end of Manhattan Island- The site was chosen not only because of the incomparable harbor, but because of its na.tural defenses. Protected* on three sides by water, the old Dutch settlers felt entirely secure behind the stone v/all v/hich they built across the island at the present location of T/all Street. By 1800 the city had expanded north beyond the canal v.hich the colonists constructed across the island where Canal Street now is. In 1807 it had become apparent to citizens of New York that the city would eventually cover the whole of Manhattan Island, even including the tovm of Harlem, some seven miles to the north. So a city planning commission was appointed, which after long deliber- ation reported in 1811. The plan as reported and adopted was in many respecte a great mistake. The commissioners thou^t that the burden of traffic would be from river to river across the island, so 225 new streets were planned from east to west--nineteen to the mile, T;hile north and south there v/ere only twelve main avenues, six to the mile, with Broadway as the only diagonal street north of the old city. Many years later, at great expense, Lexington Avenue was built between Third and Fourth Avenues and Madison Avenue between Fourth and Fifth, but in the modern city v/ith the main course of traffic north and south there is great congestion on all the avenues, a condi ti on r hi ch mi^t have been avoided if the actual, course of development had been foreseen by the commissi oners . The course of development at first followed the east side of the Island. The western side was so rough and rocky that even in 1850 it was thought that it would never be possible to use it for anything but goat pasture. It was perhaps fortunate that this v;as the case for it gave this section a longer time to ripen into a higher use. Since it was not built up until within the past forty years Y/e find in this section modern apartment houses and dwellings instead of the old low tenements which were built in the seventies and eighties on First, Second, and Third Avenues. -116- Uev: Yorl; is almost entirely dependent en its transportation facilities. In Manhattan there are four main elevated lines on Second, Third, Sixth and Ninth Ave-iues and three main subway lines, Lexington Avenue, Seventh Avenue, and Broadway. Several of these lines extend through the Bronx, and the subways run througli to Brooklyn "by tunnels under the East River. The newest subway also connects with 0,ueens both by bridge and tunnel. Surface trolley lines are of comparatively little importance as nobody has time to use them except for short distances. Several surface lines have been discontinued and motor busses substituted. All of the elevated and subway lines are disgracefully congested, and this m itself is having a perceptible influence in checking development along the most congested lines. The direction of future growth will depend very largely on the routes of nev; subway lines, since people v/ill flock immediately to any section which offers some relief from the packing system on the present transit lines. Manhattan Island is still of course the center not only of comiTaerce and finance but of manufacturing. There are two main business districts, one the financial district with its focus at Broad and Wall Streets in the old city, and the other, the retail shopping district three miles north, with its focus at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The financial district is very compact, occupying only a few blocks, intensively developed with skyscraper buildings. The shopping district covers a large area vdth distinct specialization. The more popular department stores are near 34th Street; the more exclusive shops are now on Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 59th Streets; the theatre district is on Broadway and side streets from 58th to 52nd Streets; while the automobile district runs from 52nd Street to 65th Street on Broadway. The shopping district has been moved several times. Twenty years ago the great department stores were on 14th and 23rd Streets, and the removal farther up town v;as a disaster to property owners on these streets. Million dollar land values dropped to less than half a million within five years. ITov;, however, these streets are coming back as wholesale end manufacturing centers. The v/holesale districts and the garment manufacturing districts have gradually follov;ed the shopping district up town and now extend as far north as 34th Street from Fourth Avenue across to Eighth. The residence districts are quite sharply defined and are now being protected by a rigid zoning ordinance. The most exclusive end expensive residence section is still on upper Fifth Avenue along Central Park from 59th to 90th Streets. Just east is Park Avenue, a continuation of Fourth, v/i th its high class ajartment houses with apartm.ents renting at from $8,000 to $20,000 a year. On the v/est side are Riverside Drive and V/est End Avenue. South of 14th Street and er.st of the Bowery is the Lower East Side vdth its population of 1,000 and more to the acre usually living in five and six story brick tenements. Up town on the East Side around llOth and 116th Streets is Little Italy, also -117- v/ith a population oi 1,000 to the acre. Above 125th Street in Harlem is the ilegro section in which for "blocl-cs a v;hite face is almost as unusual as in Central Africa. In the past the character of many of these districts has frequently changed, and it can readily be seen how such a change vv-ould affect the value of the land. According to the records of me Hew York City Tax Department nearly 97 per cent of tlie available parcels of land in the borough of Manhattan are improved by building. Land has been valued for taxation apart from buildings only since 1904, so in tracing the value of any large area over a series of years it is always difficult to determine the land value apart from the value of the whole propertj^. There are, however, a few parcels even in the heart of the city which have never been improved. For the purposes of our study of Nev/ York land values, nine of these parcels were chosen, practically at random. All of these parcels v/ere in good business or residence section, and eight at least have increased in value at a far higher rate than has tlie gross land value of the borough Manhattan as a vAiole. We have estimated that since 1880 the value of all land in l![anhattan has increased 250 per cait, while the combined value of these nine parcels in the same period has increased 400 per cent. In tracing each parcel an early sale for a stated consideration was usually taken as the starting point. The assessed valuation was determined for each subsequent year and the taxes computed. The records were searched and the actual amounts of the special assessments levied on each parcel were determined. Then interest at four per cent compounded annually v/as computed on the original base value and on each tax or special assessment payment. In this way the total cost of each parcel to date on a four per cent basis was determined. But since each separate computation began with a different base year tlie objection was ma.de that the results of the computations were not comparable one with another. So a careful estimate of the value of each parcel was made for 1880, and the costs re- computed from that date, v/ith the surprising result that the totals v/ere only $25,000 short of the totals in the first computa- tion, a difference of six-tenths of one per cent. The increase in the base value and interest almost exactly balanced the decrease in the total amount of taxes and assessments with interest. It is this second conToutat ion which I am giving you in chart form, (Chart I; reduced to a" percentage basis. The 100 per cent line represents the value of each parcel in 1921. The solid color represents the value in 1880. The second section of the bar represents the taxes and assessments actually paid since 1880. The cross-hatched section is the interest on the base value and the final section of the bar is the interest on taxes and assessments. The net increment or decrement in each parcel is measured from tlae end. of each bar to the 100 per cent line. In the first for example, we found a decrement of 171 p^r cent while in the second there was a net increment of eight per cent of the value in 1921 and in the seventh a net increment of fifteen per cent. All of the other -118- ■" r ■*" ™ ^v ^" ^ ~ ■ Mi ■^ ^ ^ "^ .... -^ P- "" " r "" , n — - ;^ ,53 ■■•^ Co bd -i o -1 F) >- n Pr y :r — - ^ 3 -r k fc i I* 3 -* M ■^ . 1 1 II III' y - 1 t ~ ■ ■ Ih ■ o ■- - — ■ l - 1- "■■ ■ 5' '-^ ■ D |l I Ih ■ ■ a i 1 ■ i^ ! ■- - 1 « ■ * t 1 li s- ^^ J 1 ■ ■ t ") u. i— J P S - \ ^H - ^ i ^ ■- ^H ^ ^ 1 X- 1 1 5" 1 ^ II % i i |^H~~ r ;^ ~ "" 1 w N ri ^i* ^ ■ k.> '»"■ iH w -^ I- \ ' 1 ■ ^ 1 1 Ci "" ^ i 1 r 1 v\ - \ 5! 'i ^^ 1 2 ^. ^ ) ' " " L3 Lj. "" " "* "" " " 1 K ^ Aa <• r -;> ^ - ct 1 f fi^ ^ n V ^ \ s; ^ ^ II •^ Ck _^ D \ \ ^ «. ' ^ 1 1 1 i ;^ r ^ I -* -* >; b . t 1 a f ■' ?" r f n "n V ~f -t •+ ^ — -^ ^ > '. i ■" ■^ 1 1 ^ ^ ^ s ' 1 ^ te" ' 1 :? > 1 •v /• V- » i i c' ^ L- parcels showed heavy losses as compared va th a hypothetical four per cent investment. The first of these parcels is located on Fourteenth Street near Fifth Avenue in the retail "business district of 25 years ago. It is the last re;naining portion of the estate of Henry Spingler, a New Yorl: merchant of Revolutionary times, v/ho in 1788 "bought several acres around v/hat is novi 14th Street, as a farm. The parcel comprises fifteen city lots and is occupied only "by a dilapidated old stone mansion and a sta'ble , relics of bygone splendor. In order to make full allowance for the use value of improvements, the carrying chE.rges have "been computed here on only 12 of the 15 lots, on the very liberal assumption that the use value of the house and stable has equalled the carrying charges on three lots. The actual figures in this case are: Value in 1880, $320,000; Taxes, $323,050; Interest on base value, $1,022,303; and Interest on Taxes, $299,799, making a total cost of $1,965,152 as compared with an estimated value in 1921 of $726,000. T\7enty years ago -before the removal of the retail trade, the property was probably v^orth $1,200,000. The secona parcel is a lot measuring 54 by 100 feet on Fifth Avenue above 39th Street, now valued at about $932,000. In 1845, John D. Wendell paid $8,000 for this and three other lots, making the proportional, value of this parcel about $3,000. In 1880 it was worth about $7 5,000. The taxes paid since 1880 amount to $295,000 and the total cost v.'ith interest compounded at four per cent amounts to $850,000, so that here in the heart of the new retail district there has been a net increment of $82,000. In other v/ords this vacant property, worth eleven times as much as in 1680 has been v;orth as an investment only slightly more than four per cent. The next four parcels are located on upper Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park, near the residences of Carnegie, Frick, and Sx-Senator Clark. Here land, although still very valuable, has not increased in value materially in twenty years. The zoning ordinance now prohibits apartment houses in this section, and in New York the one family house, even for the very wealthy is rapidly passing. The seventh parcel is located on V/est 64th Street near Broadway, in the center of the automobile trade. It has increased in value very rapidly in the past ten years, and this accounts for the 15 per cent net increment. Parcel 8 is on Central Park 7/est. It was more valuable ten years ago than at present. It is well located, but for some reason the early promise of fashionable development v;as not realized. The properties Eurronnding Central Park all participated in a tremendous boom when the Park was opened in the later fifties. The section which had been a waste of abandoned stone quarries and swamps, the camping ground of a horde of squatters, va th their pigs, dogs, and chickens was bought in 1856 by the city and in 1858 was opened as a magnificent park. Within five years the assessed valuations -120- in the three wards 'bounding the park rose frora ^26,000,000 to $47,000,000, and in another five years the valuation was $80,000,000. The city paid an average price of $7,800 an acre for the first section of the park from 59th Street to 106th Street. In 1859 it v/as decided to extend the park to 110th Street and this nev/ section, more distant and originally far less valuable, cost the city $20,000 an acre. Lots on Fifth Avenue v/orth ahout $1,000 before 1850 were worth from $10,000 to $15,000 in 1860. After the Civil 7/ar there was another boom in Fifth Avenue lots and these same lots by 1870 were selling from $50,000 to $100,000. Then came the collapse after the panic of 1873. A parcel at the corner of 83rd Street which sold for $250,000 in 1872 sold again for $145,000 in 1874 and for $132,000 in 1878. Another lot which sold for $71,500 in 1871 was sold at foreclosure in 1875 for $43,500 and was sold again in 1878 for $26,000. But by 1880 the trend was again upward, and continued so until about 1903 when other exclusive residence sections began to attract some of the wealthy residents. This drift to other sections has left values of residence property at about the same figures as in the years from 1900 to 1905. The ninth parcel represented in the diagram is located on Riverside Drive between 109th Street and Cathedral Parlcway. This property has steadily increased in value, but not rapidly enough to absorb its he3.ry carrying charges. It should perhaps be said that this parcel was sold last year for a price not stated, but known to be greatly in excess of the estimated value in our table. A large part of the sale price, however, was allowed to stand as a second mortgage, and in addition the former owners obtained for the purchaser a building loan of several hundred thousand dollars which now stands as the first mortgage against the property. This service, if rendered by such a firm as S.V/. Straus & Co ., would require a bonus of perhaps $150,000, so it is difficult to say how much of the consideration of this sale was the price of the land and how much was compensation for the financing service. The final bar in the chart represents the total value of the nine parcels, with the totals of the various items of cost reduced to a percentage basis. The 100 per cent point represents in this bar a present value of $5,057,000 and the total cost, $8,171,000. The value in 1880 v/as $1,012,500, and the taxes and assessments without interest, $1,916,000. In other words, if someone had purchased these nine tracts in 1880 and sold them in 1921, his actual cash outlay in the forty-one years would have been approximately $2,000,000, and his only income, aside from a few hundred dollars for the rental of bill board space, vrould have been $2,000,000, the difference betv/een the cash outlay and the selling price. But wlien we consider that at four per cent compound interest money will double in eighteen years it is clear that if he had invested his original $1,012,500 in four per cent bonds and re-invested the interest at four per cent the present value of his estate would be just about $5,000,000. and in addition he would have saved the $2,000,009 which he paid in taxes and assessments. -121- I Taxation on his oonds may be disregarded, since even if his bonds were not non- taxable, the chance is very slight that they would have been taxed, as very little personal pro per tv in Nev; York has ever been reached for purposes of taxation. These properties were all ripe for improvement during practically the v/hole period of our study. How about the nev;er sections v.hich have been developed more recently? The northern end of Manhattan Islapd, above the deep valley which cuts the ridge of hills at 125th Street-, is a section v-hich was in the main, v/aste land valuable only in anticipation of its future utilization as city land. Here v/e can trace the whole evolution of farm land into highly developed city property. In this whole section, the most valuable corner today is isist Street and St. Nicholas Avenue on Washington Heights. Here there is a business center which would do credit to a very considerable town. The Washington Bridge carries 181st Street across the Harlera River to University Heights in the Bronx, and a subway station gives access to the express trains on the Seventh Avenue line. This whole section is built up with apartment houses for people of moderate means. In 1891 a tract of 38 acres including this corner was sold at auction by a syndicate organized by Henry Morgenthau. Our study of tliis tract covers the years from 1891 to 1921 and also the earlier period from 1850 to 1891. The auction sale of the v/hole tract immediately after its subdivision gave a good starting point for the computation of costs. The total price paid for the 411 lots was $1,490,000. In 1906 two years after tlie opening of the subway the land value v;as over $4,000,000 and in 1921, $9,000,000. This represents an increase in land value of 125 per cent in the 15 years 1906-1921. Luring the same period the v/hole of the Washington Heights Section increased in land value about 50 per cent and as we have seen the land value of the Borough of Manhattan as a whole remained practically stationary. In computing the carrying charges on this tract the assumption was made that any building erected would yield sufficient income to pay all carrying charges including interest on the parcel improved. The special assessments, however, were taken in full, because they were considered in the nature of a capital charge for the direct improvement of the property, one of the emerging costs v;hich is usually directly reflected in increased value. During the thirty years since 1891 the ovmers of vacant land in this tract have paid $653,000 in taxes and the total amount of special assessments levied en the vAiole tract has been $481,000. Adding interest com- pounded at four per cent computed on the original cost and on the payments to the city, taking onl^' that interest ?/hich can be con- sidered as a charge on vacant land, v/e find that the total cost to the owners, not compensated by direct income has been $4,757,000, or 53 per cent of the present value. This, as we have seen, is a secti on which has developed with unusual rapidity from waste land to higlily utilized city land. -122- But even here there are 38 lots v.hich still remained vacant in 1921. These lots in 1891 sold for $131,450. They are now worth $47 4,500. Their owners have paid $165,000 in taxes and $46,500 in special assessments, and perhaps other items of cost such as grading, removal of rocks, etc. Interest on the original cost and the known carrying charges brings the total cost through 1921 to $774,000 or 163 per cent of the actual value in that year. It is interesting to note that even within this 38 acre tract estimates of future value increases in 1891 were far astray- The highest prices paid for lots were for those on Amsterdam Avenue overlooking the Harlem River. At present the most valuable land is two blocks v/est, and even aside from the subv/ay the exact location of which could not have been anticipated by the original purcJ-iasers, the lots on Broadway two blocks still further v/est are nov/ much more valuable than those on Aiusterdam Avenue. This tract had a very interesting history prior to 1891. In 1850 it was known as the Ealzius Moore Farm and was valued for taxation at $8,000. Since vacant land was assessed very low at that time the farm nay have been worth $24,000. In 1868. at the height of a land boom, the farm was purchased by a Civil War general, Daniel Butterfield, and a i^artner, for $330,000. They paid $50,000 in cash and gave mortgages for $280,000, on which they paid at least six per cent interest. In 1873 the boom collapsed, but General Butterfield and his partner held the land until 1879 when the mortgages were foreclosed and the property sold for $225,000. Assuming that the partners paid the charges levied against the property their losses T;ere:- nine years interest on $280,000 or about $150,000; their -vAiole equity of $50,000; Taxes amounting to $34,000 and special assessments of $63,000, a total loss in ten years of about' $300, 000. In 1880 the farm was sold to George Ehret. a wealthy brewer for $315,000, and he in turn sold it in 1883 to Edward Morgan, Governor of ITew York, for $450,000. Morgan's executors sold it in 1885 for $350, 000 ^to Levi P. Morton and an associate. Morton, then Vice President of the United States, sold it to the Morgenthau syndicate in 1391. for $980,000. This syndicate surveyed and plotted the land and as we have seen sold it at auction for $1,490,000 in the came year. From 1858 to 1885 it is obvious that this tract used as a football of land speculation had brouf^it financial ruin to two men and great loss to the estate of a third. Ty;o others, both holding only a short time, gained in the speculation, but far less than the others lost. Mr. Morton holding the land for six years lor f^^i^S prices more tlian doubled his money. The syndicate which suodiviaeo. the farm made a gross iDrofit of $530,000 in one month on an actuax cash investment of only $300,000. It is not known how much these operators paid for surveying and mapping, grading, adve". tis ing, and auctioneer's fess, but even though these expenses were heavy there was undoubtedly a considerable net profit m this unusuaiiy qu i ck tu mover , -123- These parcels and tracts of land as we have seen have shared fully in the tremendous increases in value xvhicli have characterized the development of Manhattan Island. But as the values have in- creased the taxes and other socially necessary costs have also increased. Thus v/hile the gross increments in value are in all cases very great they are largely and often entirely ahsor'bed by the carrying charges, so tliat tiie net increments which do remain rarely amount to more than the aca.imulation of capital at a nominal rate of interest. -124- LECTUK5 III. Ov.tlyir-K Ur"ban Land and Lot Auction Sales It will te aecessr.ry later to return to the Borough of Manhattan, to illustrate sone of the points in our more general discussion of land value increments and decrements, but for to-day I v:ant to speak of the outlying urban land in IJew Yorli vvhich has in the past fifteen years been ripening into a higher use. In the case of much of this land perhaps it is not so much the ripening into a higher use as ripening into its only use. For in vnany sections in and about Nev; York the land is distinctly sub-marginal from an agricultural point of vlexj^ First, I will speak of the geography of the outlying boroughs of New York. As ycu may know, these outlying sections around Kev/ York 7/ere consolidated into the Greater City in 1898. Few York now consists of five boroughs - Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Q,ueen£ and Richmond. Ue have already spoken of Manhattan. The Bronx is the only part of the city strictly on the mainland- It lies to the north of Manhattan and is separated from it by the Harlem River, a narrow stream which has been miade navigable by dredging and canalisation. There are many bridges across this river and two subway tunnels under it, malcing the Bronx now little more than an extension of Manliattan. In 2.rea it is about tv.l ce as large as Manhattan and it now has a population of about 800,000. Brooklyn lies to the south east of Manhattan on Long Island. The East River, a strait connecting Long Island Sound vd th New York Bay, separates Long Island from Manhattan Island and the Bronx. Three great bridges and two subway tunnels now connect Manhattan v-lth Brooklyn. In area Brooklyn is three times as large as Manhattan and the two boroughs are about equal in population. Coueens, with its 116 square miles is by far the la -gest of the boroughs in area. It extends from the East River and Long Island Sound on the north tc the Atlantic Ocean on the South, half surroT-inding the borough of Brooklyn. It is to a large extent still rural with mucli land which is still agricultural and not yet sub- divided. The population has grown very rapidly within the past fifteen years until it has nov; over 400,000 iniiabitants in several distinct city units such as Long Island City, Flushing, Jamaica and Rockaway. This grovmi has been stimulated by the building of two elevated railway lines connecting with the ITew York subways both by a tunnel and a bridge. Another tunnel has carried the Long Island Railroad under the East River and under Manhattan to the Pennsylvania Terrainal, giving to all parts of Queens access to Hew York by fast electric suburban trains. C^ueens Boulevard, connect- ing with the Q.ueensboro Bridge at the Plaza in Long Is lard City and running tlircugii to Jamaica, is a part of the best automobile route from Manhattan to the ocean, and has opened up large sections of q.ueen3 to motor traffic. It is not difficult to understand the rapid grov/th of the borough and it seems quite safe to predict a -125- continuation of this growth. The Borough of Richmond comprises the vvhole of Staten Island, five miles down tlie liay from Manhattan and separated from Brooklyn by the Harrows, the channel connecting the upper bay v/ith the lower bay and the ocean. It has as yet no rail connections v/ith the other boroughs, and except for a fringe of population along the shore of New York Bay is still largely a v/aste of hills and salt marshes. The northward development of the urban area of Uew York con- tinued through the Bronx and, after the consolidation, the opening of three great parks, Van Cortlandt, Bronx and Pelham Bay greatly increased the attractiveness of this borough. The opening of the subway in 1905 and the extension o-^ elevated lines seemed to make continued rapid development certain, but within recent years the rate of growth has been retarded. Y^ftiile it still has a healthy_ growth the expectations of fifteen years ago have not been realized. This slowing down of the rate of grov/th together with the increas- ing tax rate and increasing expense of street im.provements has been disastrous to the ov/ners of vacant land. To illustrate the difference between the investment value of vacant land in recent years and the investment value of similar land at an earlier period we have made a comparison betv/een the tract on Washington Heights described in the preceding lecture, and a tract of about 90 acres in the Upper Bronx v/hich still remains practically vacant. The Washington Heights tract was purchased in 16 68 for $330,000 and sold in 1891, twenty-three years later for $980,000. During that period the owners paid in taxes ^91,000 and in special assessments $77, COO. Interest compounded at 4^ annually on all these payments brings the total cost to $1,093,500 or 112 per cent of its sale value in 1891, Thus if General Butteriield had been able to hold the property for twenty three years, the property while yielding less thsm 4 per cent interest v;ould still have had some investment value. The Bronx tract was purchased in 1894 for $313,000 and is still held by the estate of the purchaser. In 27 years the ovmer has actually paid $204,300 in taxes and $75,000 in special assess- ments. Interest compounded annually at 4 'per cent brings the total cost to $1,290,000. The tract is now valued for taxation at $514,000, which is probably a liberal estimate of its value. The cost to the owners in actual cash is 115.2 per cent of its present value, while with the inclusion of interest it has cost the owners 251 per cent of its present value. The history of this tract, which is tj-pical of vacant land in this section, illustrates the great costs under modern conditions of holding land while it is developing into a higher use. The owner was not holding the land out of use, for it was worthless for agriculture end not yet needed as urban land. In order to raoice liie return ea.ual to that of a four per cent investment the increase in land value should have been 300 per cent. Actually it increased in value only 64 per cent. In the next few years the cost will be even -126- higher. The tscs.es are nov; about $14,000 a year. Special assess- ment levies have only "begun, and it v;ill still cost inore than $1,000,000 and possibly $2,000,000 to open and pave streets and build sevjers. In order to avoid the ln.ea.vy overhead cost of carrying vacant property, real estate operators in promoting new sub-divisions freqvientiy sell the lots at auction. During the years from 1905 to 1913 such lot auctions were unusually frequent in New Yorli. The lots were sold la.rgely to people of relatively small means who bouglit either for speculation or with a view to future building. Yihatever were the motives of the purchasers, conditions of develop- ment have forced the majority of txiem to hold their lots vacant for from eight to sixteen years, and it is interesting to see how they have fared from the investment point of view. A test v;as made by an intensive stuCj of ten tracts v;hich were sold between the years 1905 and 1913. Six of these were in the Bronx, three in Brooklyn, and one in Richmond. The history of these sales is shown in graphic forra in Chart II. The greatest of these sales was held in 1913. The tract sold was formerly the Morris Park race track, wi tli somie adjacent land, altogether about 250 acres. Tract No. 1 in Chart II. This was surveyed into 3019 lots. Since tiis sale was in accordance xith a court order the seal cf the State of New York was featured in all the advertising matter. The advertisements stated that the land would be sacrificed at unrestricted auction and 70 per cent could remain on mortgage. One advertisement states, "We know of $3,800,000,000 in New York State invested at from 3-1/2 to 4 per cent. If it were invested in Bronx real estate it would be ob- taining 15 to 30 per cent interest per annum. Actual statistics show that to be the average increase in values. The assessed values in 1890 were $44,000,000, in 1904, $238,000,000 and in 1912, $617,000,000." How these figures can represent 15 to 30 per cent increase it is difficult to say, especially since these figures take no account of the changed ratio of assessed values to true values. Even as the figures stand, they represent average annual gross increases only between eleven and twelve per cent. Further- more, tliey include all imiDrovements , the assessed land value alone in 1912 being only $333,000,000. If s.fter malcing this slight correction we take into account the actual costs in taxes and assessments we find that five to six per cent \70uld be a liberal estimate of the actual return on Bronx vacant land during this period. Other advertiseaents called attention to the "Persistent, Insistent and Consistent" northerly grov/th of the city. Attention was called to selected parcels in other parts of the Bro^nx which had shown large increases in value and all the transit facilities, actual and pro-oosed, were continually stressed. The sale continued for two weeks and the lots sold for prices totalling about $3,700,000 or an average price of $1217, a lot. At the date of the sale there were four houses en the whole tract. In 1S21 there were still only forty lots improved and tlie assessed valuation of -127- J ■- - . ":^_; - ^ - - . - -_.""^..""" h- , „ ~5> -& ^Q -cj ^o ^^ ^S. '~''* -4- ^'^ -^ £ " > >V > -ft i, -.>, 'ii'<- ,. . W^- vi f. . ; 1 r -< -1 ^ - ^> r ^ ^ -^ i^ i ^ ^ ^\ itl-^E" 5- • "" ' 3i ? »• '^ ■ - ». _ -+-^ ^-_^___-.-j. ^. _ _ L =" ci- p. S ^ — 1- — ^ ~, ^T -_ ^__-».__t J.- - I L X 1 ^ r> ST it -. "T ""IT " 1 1 the whole tract was $2,742,000, nearly one million dollars less than the price paid at the auction in 1913. ITot only was the actual value less, hut in the eight years the owners had paid in taxes 5439,000 and in special assessraents :;^729,000. Counting interest at 4^, which was prohably less than was actually paid on the mortgages, the total cost througli 1921 was $6,375,000 or 231 per cent of the 1921 value. To raalie the case concrete, suppose John Smith to have "bought two average lots at the auction, a plot 50 X 100 feet. The price was ^2434, of which he paid |7§0 in cash and gave a mortgage for $1704. ¥e v/ill suppose that he v/ithdrev; the cash payment from a savings bank which had heen paying him four per cent interest. In eight years the interest paid and foregone would amount to $1309. His taxes would have been $326, and special assessments $486. The lots have now cost him $4555 and they are worth to-day $1816.^) Street improvements have only he^un. If they are completed in ten more years the total cost of this property to John Smith before the lots are really ready for build- ing vri.ll be about $10,000. Tliis is the present value of some of the most desirable residence property in the Bronx today, that on University Avenue near Nev; Yorl: University. To anyone familiar with Morris Paik it seeras highly improbable that anything _ approaching these values will be reached in this section in tvace ten years . To show that this hypothetical case is not out of the ordinary the foliov;ing is an actual instance of similar loss in the Ogden Estate tract, number 5 on the diart. This property is directly across Washington Bridge from tlie 'Washington Heiglits tract dis- cussed before. Shortly after that auction a man bought two lots in this tract from the original purchaser, paying for them $1800. He died soon after, leaving these lots to his widow as practically his v/aole estate. The widow borrov/ed $1600, giving a mortgage on the lots at 6 per cent. She still holds them and according to her own calculation they have cost her over $5000. She is now hesitating whether tc continue this drain on her small salary or to let the lots go to foreclosure. They are valued for taxation now at just the aoiiount of the mortgage, and she has been unable to find a purchaser at a higher figure. Chart II needs little further discussion. The first six bars represent sales in the Bronx. They are distributed over^^the whole borough excgpt the lovj-er part which was all improved before 1905. The best showing is number 6, ivhich is the nearest to the lov/er city axid which is now over 70 per cent improved. Numbers 7, 8 and 9 represent sales in Brooklyn. Tracts 7 and 9 are now about half improved and are located in good residence sections w.iich are developing rapidly. Tract S is far out in Brooklyn, an hour's ride 1} A real estate dealer advertised as follows in the New YorJ World of April 22, 1922: "I can sell 306 Bronx lots that averaged. $1300 per lot in 1913 without im-Drovements and a ten cent fare to Manhattan, today for an average price of $800 per lot, wl tn sewers, sidewalks and curbs and a five cent fare to all pa^-^^> of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Kew York City. Located in Morris Park, Bronx.' -129- on the suTDway froni New York. Its greatest possilDilities lie in the plans for the developnent of a nev: seaport en Jamaica Bay to relieve the congestion in the Hudson and East River piers. The tenth tract is in the Borough of Ridnnond. This also shov/s a very heavy loss. Its only hops lies in the proposed sulDway tunnel under the llarro-ws \7hich v;ill cut in half the travelling tiue to Manhattan. These auction sales were all in "boroughs v/hich, as we shall _ see later, have shov/n healthy increases in land values and also in population. In a very few years all will be built up and beconie developed sections of Hew York City. The losses that have been suffered were evidently due to premature subdivision and over- valuation at the time of the sale. In view of the constantly in- creasing costs of ripening land for urban use, it is evident that owners of vacant land must reconcile themselves to a lower present value. The value of such land should be determined on a discount basis. Maen the cost of carrying vacant land is high the value of unimproved land not yet ready for use must be correspondingly low. As a city becomes older and more mature its rate of growth is likely to be lower than in the earlier years of its developments. If so, it v/ill talce longer now for a tract of undeveloped land to mature as urban land than it took at an earlier period for a similar tract to reach maturity. These changing conditions should be recog- nized and tal:en into consideration in the development of nev; land. In the liglat of the experience of the last eiglit years it is evident that the man who paid $2434 for his lots at Morris Park should have paid only about §900, assuming that the present valuation is justified. His land would then have doubled in value in the eight years and his investment would have yielded him about four per cent interest. Recently in New York there has been a great revival of land auctions. It is reported that Josepli P. D?.y. 'the auctioneer, wiio sold Morris Park in^l915> sold |28,000,000 v/orth of lots in 1921. If his commission is the visual five per cent above the cost of advertising, it is evident that he receivea over a million dollars for his year's work. It will be interesting to v/atch some of the tracts sold recently to discover whether his powers of persuasion are still great enough to induce purchasers to pay $2434 for lots which will be worth ;5l800 in 1950. Ilr. Day himself is not ignorant of "these matters. Some of his remarks in ?jn address before a Y.II.C.A. class in real estate in 1937 are very illuminating. He first described the right kind of an auction sale "where the lots are properly developed and all iyaprove- ments are in." Then to quote his own words:- "The wrong kind of lot sa]es at auction are the kind v^here tracts are sv^ddenly opened up, a scraper iv.n through, posts stuck in the ground to drnote that this is such and such a street, no water pipes, gas sewer, curbs, sidev/alks or anything else. And that kind of a sale, ^ as a rule, has a brass band and a free lunch, to get your stomach axd senses feeling good and then they hand ycu v/hat v/e call a gold brick, -130- because anyone that buys at that kind of a sale buys as a rule for a rise, or maybe to build, Let us say they buy for a rise, "^il/hat is going to maice the rise? It is th© building of houses, build- ings, along side or near them. .Tyell, if people have no facilities for getting v;ater, no sewer system, or if on a rainy day they have to T7allc in six inches of mud to get anyvhere on account of no side- vfallcs, that is not going to attract them, no matter hov; poor they are. They would rather stay in their tenement quarters. And that answers the question of building. So every person as a rule, that buys a, lot in an undeveloped section like that v/hich is not fortu- nate enough to have another section build up to and maXe improve- ments in the neighborhood and wal:e a demand for his property, he is stuck. Furthermore, the people who buy these lots are often poor, and if assessments are made for improvements they let the lots go. And then I maintain you are mailing an anemy of the purchaser." Ur . Day sold Morris Park six years after he made that address. He undoubtedly made some enemies there, but there were still plenty of purchasers left for his lots in 1921. The history of the development of subdivisions around New York entirely aside from the auction business reveals many sordid stories of outriglit swindling, such as the selling of lots which did not exist and actual lots which were located in salt marshes which will not be reclaimed for a generation at least. Then tiiere have been sharp practices in the sale of perfectly good lots such as am instance" reported in the Real Estate Record and Guide for June 10, 1910. A. group of promoters bought a large vacant block in the Bronx and petitioned the Board of Estimate to cut a new street through the property. As soon as their petition was granted they sold the lots on each side of the proposed new street, retaining to themselves the title to the land to be used for street purposes. Yjhen the street was completed the promoters collected from the city an award for the title to the street property of $42,441. The city then levied a special assessment of $45,339 on the adjoining property ov/ners who had purchased of the prom.oters, to cover this award and expenses. This, of course, was all entire- ly within the law and the property owners had no recourse. Aside from the loss to the purchasers resulting from the premature subdivision of land there is also frequently a social loss through the opening and paving of streets, the building of_ sewers and the extension of v/ater mains far in advance of legiti- mate need. These improvements are expensive and the interest item on the original cost is material. Then the sidewalks and pavements deteriorate through neglect and vhen years later they are actually needed the work must be done all over again, tiiis time at the expense of the city. In Morris Park tiiere is even an extension of a street car line v/hich still remains unused. Then in some cases there is social loss due to the premature v/ithdrawal of land from agricultural use. This loss may readily be overestimated, however, since all urban land is a very sirrs-ll part of the total land area of the country. In many cases, too, this loss is counterbalanced by the use of vacant lots for gardening purposes. -151- It may be admitted tiiat the last few years have "been unusually bad years for speculation in outlying vacant land. Not only have taxes increased to an unprecedented extent, but v/ar conditions increased building costs, making it difficult to improve vacant land. Then iramigratipn pr-actically ceased for several years so that the rate of population growth in New York City v;as only about half as great in the decade 1910-1920 as in the previous decades, nevertheless it is evident that the socially necessary costs of bringing agricultural land into urban use are raudi greater than prospective home builders have supposed them to be. Even under the most favorable conditions it appears that the holding of vacant land involves heavy costs, for which the ovmer can be compensated only by an extremely rapid appreciation in value, which can come only when the period of development is short. Premature sub- division, with a lengthening of the transition period from agri- cultural to urban use is certain to result in heavy loss. -132- LECTUKE IV Increnents and Decrements in O utlyinpr Urban Land In this lecture I shall speak nore generally of land values in each of the outlying •boroughs of New York and try to shovr what have been the underlying causes \'\iiich in recent years have resulted ■ in gains or losses to the ovmers of this great area of land which has been ripening into urban use. The total value of this outlying land is far less than the value of the highly improved land on the lovjer end of Manhattan Island, but in our study of urban land problems the course of development of these outlying areas has a more direct bearing on our rea^l problems than has the development of those extremely high values in the business sections of Man- hattan. The unique character of these high values is best under- stood by the astonishing fact that the land value of Manhattan Island with its 24 square miles is greater than the land value of all the remaining boroughs combined, v/ith all of Chicago and all of Boston added for good measure. As compared v;ith agricultural land the value of the land on Manhattan Island is approximately equal to the acreage value of all the farm land in the State of Iowa, or of that in the States of Uev/ York and Wisconsin combined. But Manhattan, as we have seen, has for fifteen years main- tained practically stationary land values, and one may even venture to advance the theory that much of the land in this borough has reached its maxLmvim of utilization, and that generally speaking sites on Manhattan Island will not be made more productive than they are today. It 'is possible that in the futm-e it will be found mare profitable to spread the business sections of Nev/ York out over a vfider area, using land of lower rental value, than to bring about any more intensive use of a fev/ strategic blocks, v/e have already noted this expansion in the retail shopping district. Twenty five years ago this district was confined to Broadway from Astor Place to 23rd Street, Fourteenth Street, Tv/enty-third Street and ilfth and Sixth Avenues between these streets. This v/hole area Eovered only about t7/enty blocks. Now the shopping district begins belov/ 34th Street and extends for more than twenty blocks along S'ifth Avenue alone, while John V/anamaker still remains, 26 blocks farther south, at Astor Place. Even the financial district is expanding. The Nev/ Curb Exchange was built two blocks v;est of Broadway, and several years ago the liVoolworth Building and the Hudson Terminal Building were built north and west of the old financial section and tiie 'vi/liitehall Building at the extreme south on Battery Park. This expansion of business tends to increase values in the blocks newly utilized for business but it may tend at the same time to equalize values ai'id keep all at a lower level. This expansion of business, and manufacturing as well, was en- croaching on some of the most valuable residence property in Man- hattan until these residence sections were protected by zoning laws, and manufacturing in particular has encroached on tenement districts, so that the population of Manhattan is no longer increasing- The -133- growth of the future is bound to "oe greatest in the outlying boroughs. And as these outlying districts grow, new lousiness centers are developing which in themselves have the appearance of the 'business districts of an important city. Brooklyn has for many years had an important shopping center of its own with at least tliree large department stores which compare favorably with those in the vicinity of 34th Street in Manhattan. In the Bronx the most important business center is at the corner of 149th Street and 3rd Avenue, with many smaller centers of local business scattered over the borough v/here before the consolidation, small suburban villages ^ere located. In Q,ueens there are four very distinct centers of population. The most important is Long Island City with many important factories, comparable in itself to a manufacturing city like Grand Rapids, Michigan. Jaraaica is a large residence suburb of about 100,000 population with its ov/n business center, connected with 17ew York by two main lines of railroad, an elevated line and surface cars. Flushing on Long Island Sound, also has its own center and is more like a distinct small city than any other part of Greater New York.. Finally Rockaway, a sumiaer city built along the ocean front, also has its individuality different from that of any other part of Mew York. The Borough of Richmond as I have said before has a population of only a hundred thousand. Here there is no appearance of a city, only a succession of villages each "dth its ovm groceries and small dry goods stores. Each of these smaller urban centers in the different boroughs has its own character and their rapid growth may mean that a de- centralizing process is setting in, which may eventually diminish the relative importance of Manhattan in the economic life of the city. Manhattan has already lost its political predominance, for Brooklyn alone now polls a heavier vote than Manhattan, and a Brooklyn man is mayor of the city. This same process is going on in other cities. Even though absorbed in the larger city in name, these satellite cities retain their separate identity just as do otrier satellite cities which remain outside politically. And as these new centers grov/ each vdth its industries, stores, banks and theatres, with improved transportation more and more equalizing the accessibility of different sections, may there not be a tendency to break down much of that high differential which now exists between the great business centers on the one hand and these smaller centers on the other? From the last lecture I may have conveyed the impression that land values in the outlying boroughs of New York City v;ere not increasing. If so , I want to correct that impression today. In addition to our intensive study of vacant tracts and tracts sold at auction a study was also made of the actual increases in land value, both gross and net, in the five borou.^hs, taking each borough as a whole. The Nevi/ York City Tax Department has reported in each year since 1910 the number and total valuation of vacant parcels in each borough. By obtaining the ratio in each year -134- since 1910 between the value of vacant land and the value of all land and projecting this series of ratios back to 1906, on the assunption that the trend of tiiese ratios before 1910 was similar to the trend .since that date, we e'stabiished a basis for an estimate of the carrying charges on the land in each borough. The value of the land was then estimated for 1905 and for 1921 by a comparison of sales with assessed valuations. The Tax Department never totalled the special assessments by boroughs so it v;as necessary to go to the original records and add these assessments by boroughs and by years. As in the more intensive studies, all special assessments were included as carrying charges, vliile taxes and four per cent compound interest on the 1906 value and on the tax and assessment payments, were computed only in proportion to the value of vacant land. In Manhattan these carrying charges were relatively small, since there was compe.ratively little vacant land. They v/ere sufficient hov^ever to turn a gross increment in value of 1.4 per cent into a net decrement of 4.8 per cent of the land value in 1921. In the Bronx the gross increment was 23.6 per cent, but here the vacant land was a considerable factor, and the various carrying charges turned this increment into a net decrement of 35.1 per cent of the value in 1921. In all other boroughs however there was a net decrement after allov;ing for all special assessments, and carrying charges on vacant land. In Brooklyn this increment was only 7.8 per cent in the whole sixteen years, but in Q^ueens it was 26.5 per cent and in Richmond 28.6 per cent. In view of the heavy loss on the tract in Richmond which was sold at auction in 1906 it" is rather surprising to find the higjiest net increment in this borough. But in the first place it must be admitted that for Riclxmond the data for i:iai:ing the estimates of value bo til in 1906 and in 1921 was very unsatisfactory, and there may be a considerable error in the estimates. Then the increases in value have been very largely in the improved sections of the borough. Accordingly, the valuation of the vacant land, much of it in hills and marshes, is very low and since the carrying charges are computed on the value of vacant land the cost is proportionately much lower than in Queens where there is a large amount of vacant land having great potential value. Then in Ridimond special assess- ments in sixteen years amounted to less than five per cent of the present value of the land as compared with ten per cent in Queens and 16.6 per cent in the Bronx. The actual amounts levied in special assessments in the five boroughs are particularly interesting as ti-^ese special assessments represent direct costs of the development of land. In the Broru: special assessments amounted to $;60,281,000 in Brooklyn $51,798,000 in Queens $34,316,000, in Ilanhattan .1?19,719.000 and in Richmond $3,193,000. In Manliattan special assessments are now relatively small, for the sev/ers are all constructed and all the streets are paved except a few short streets in the extreme northern end. The heaviest assessments in tiie next few years v.all probably be levied in Queens with its large area ready for development. If Richmond is ever fully developed, the cost will be unusually heavy, for there will be such engineering problems to be solved as grading on the hills and filling and draining in the marshes. Since in -155- Q,ueens the rate of irxreace in land value was so high a separate study v/as made here ty v/axds in order to locate the area having the greatest net incren^nt. The greatest gross jncrement was in the. Second Tard, knovm as rev.'toT;n \/hich lies between Long Island City and JaiTa,ica along the railway and Queens Boulevard. The land value of this ward increased in sixteen years from $25,000,000 to $86,000,000. But here the carrying charges "brought the total cost to $63,000,000 thus reducing the net increment to $25,000,000. In Long Island City, land values increased fron $34,400,000 to $80,500,000 out the total cost as computed amounted to $76,500,000, leaving only $5,000,000 as a net increment. In Jamaica also, the costs absorbed the greater part of the gross increment of value, although here as in ITev.'tov/n the holding of land yielded a material investment return above costs. The greatest net increments however were not in the most rapidly developing wards but in the remote v/ards of Flushing and Rockaway. In these wards the gross increase was not as rapid as in llev/tov/n and Jamaica, but there v/ere very few special assessments and the taxes and interest charges on vacant land were relatively low. In Flushing the total net incre- ment ?,bove costs was 39 per cent and in Rockav/ay 49 per cent. In Rockaway this is all the more remarkable because the increase in value took place almost entirely in the years from 1906 to 1911. In the last ten years values in Rockaway have been practically stationary and those who purchased in 1910 and 1911 have suffered heavy loss. In Flushing v;e can see the process of inflation of the value of large areas of vacant land far in advance of its development- Probably most of this land is nov; held for speculation. There is still enough vacant land nearer New York to accomodate the increase of population for m^-ny years to come, and recent purchasers at present prices will probably find it rather expensive to hold this land until it is ripe for urban use. V;'e have been considering the actual figures of gross and net increments of value in Nev/ York urban land. ^.Vliat then is the lesson in more general terms? ^.Thether there has been a net gain or a net loss one fact stands out clearly in the study of every parcel and tract of land investigated and in the studies of _ the various boroughs. That is the staggering, and ever increasing^ cost incident to the ovmership of land. Take first the item of taxes. Before the Civil Var the tax rate in New York had averaged about one per cent over a period of twenty years. Land was assessed at about fifty per cent of its true value. The actual tax rate was therefore about one half of one per cent. Even in 1906 the rate on true value was only 1.12 per cent, but in 1921 it was 2.77 on the assessed value in Llanhattan and 2,63 in the Bronx. Even correcting on our assumption that land is assessed at 95 per cent of its value in Manhattan the rate on true value is at least 2,63 or more th^n five times as high as in the years when John Jacob Astor was buying land in advance of the growth of the city. And there is no indication that the present tax rate v;ill be materially reduced. The ccst of adrainistering the affairs of the city has increased and the cit;;,'- is constantly expanding its -156- econonic activities and its pu'olic service. The costs of the schools, tiie police and fire departments are continually increasing, and nolDody vants these services curtailed. iln the old day? little attention v/as paia to the cleaning of streets. ITov/ people demand clean streets and also demand that pavements be kept in repair. In the v/inter, snov; must be removed. A moderately heav^,"- snov/ fall nov; costs tlie city over half a million dollars, and the cost of a heavy snov; like that of February, 1921, runs into millions. The subways have been built by the city, and interest must be paidon subY/ay bonds. The cost of maintaining the pari:s and public build- ings is constantly increasing, although the present administration has economized by cutting down 1l\e i:'ublic Library appropriations. The taxes on vacant land constitute a very material part of the revenue of the city. In Greater Hew York there v:ere in 1920, 192,021 vacant parcels of real estate valued for taxation at $549,000,000. Since a parcel is considered improved if there is any building whatever on the land, it is evident that there must be many thousand more parcels vhich are practically vacant. On the first of the vacant parcels described in my second lecture there is a house T/hich in 1920 was valued for taxation at $2,000. It is really worthless, as it would have to be torn down before the land could be profitably used, but from the point of viev/ of the tax department this is an improved parcel. But even on the figures of the tax departraent , the owners of vacant land pay $16,000,000 a year in taxes. In Queens alone vacant land pays over $4,000,000 a year or 20 per cent of the total revenue of the borough. In the Bronx it pays 16.5 per cent, in Riclii-aond 14.2 per cent, and in Brooklyn 5.6 per cent. In Manhattan, however, with only three per cent of the parcels vacant, the vacant land pa^z-s only 2.2 per cent of the taxes. This same situation un- doubtedly obtaine in other cities and certainly the tax rates m all cities have greatly increased. iIo'.7 as to special assessments. Before 1860 the cost of sewers and pavements vms absurdly low. There were very few assessments amounting to more than $100 a lot. The total amount of the assessments levied on the parcel on Pifth Avenue near 39th Street since 1845 has been only $1031 or about $4000 for a block front and this included paving and sewers. One of the Fifth Avenue vacant parcels, the whole block front between 95th and 96th Streets in vihich improveiTients were made a fev7 years later, has paid $10,355 in assessments since 1856. The Riverside Drive parcel Pvlso a block front, on v;hich most of the assessments were levied from 1880 to 1900 has paid $21,689 since 1880. In Morris Park since 1913 the sewers along have frequently cost $400 a lot or $3200 a block front and the other improvements are hardly started. These costs can be little if any lower elseviiere, for the greater part of the cost is in labor and in materials which are no more expensive in New York than elsewhere. There are other costs of land holding vhich cannot easily be computed, but which often amount to a considerable sum- The owner may pay for draining, grading, fencing, or clearing the land. Ke -137- may "be called upon for contributions for local improvements privately rrade by property owiers in the neighborhood. Then as to the interest charges. .\s we have seen the owner very often pays at least six per C3nt interest on a large part of the purclmse price, and he could easily obtain four per cent in an alternative investment. Sven though v/e may not believe that a person is justified in obtaining interest simply for holding vacant land, still from the owner's point of view interest is an actual cost. In the outlying sections around New York it has not been, until very recently, at least, socially desirable for buildingto taiie place more rapidly. Therefore the owner has not been anti- social i-n holding land out of use. Even assioraing that he pai d_ more than the land was worth in the first place, there were still the tax and assessment payments, which he was obliged to pay. If he had deposited the same amounts in a savings bank he would have received four per cent compound interest. Under our present system of land tenure somebody had to hold this land, so it does not seem unreasonable to allow at least four per cent interest as a part of the carrying charges en vacant land. This means then that the annual cost of carrying vacant land is from 6 l/2 to 7 per cent plus the actual amounts of special assessments. In the ten auction sale tracts the payments for special assessments have been slightly more than the ta>:es since the dates of sale. This would indicate that during the period of development the total carrying cost under present conditions is at least ten per cent a year. If tiierefore vacant land is to pay as an investment it must increase in value ten per cent a year which means that it must double in value in eight years. In a,ll this discussion of increm.ents and decrem.ents the changing value of the dollar has been left out of consideration. In the course of the investigation, however , some such computations v/ere made. Since the value of land in dollars was falling while the value of the dollar v/as also falling, land values at the 1913 price level were for three years during and after the war below fifty per cent of their value in 1913. The carrying charges more- over increased rapidly during this period, so if our computations v;ere entirely expressed in terms of the 1913 dollar the increments even in Cj,ueena would be changed to decrements, and the losses else- where would be staggering. This, however, is hardly fair, because the extreme fluctuations in the general price were only temporary, and with a return to normal conditions land values will undoubtedly recover their losses. But even aside from the changing price level v/e have seen that vacant land does not have real investment value. For siiort periods in a rapidly rising real estate market speculation in vacant land is often profitable, but where values are stationary or only increasing at a moderate rate, the costs of holding land will turn an apparent profit into a loss. The studies of vacant lots in Manhattan, of la.rge tracts in the nev/er sections of the city, and of the outlying boroughs, taking each borough as a v^iole, all point to the same conclusion, and show the fallacy in the i. popular assumption that large profits are made by holding out of use land which is urgently needed for the development of the city. -138- LECTUPji; V. The Rent of Land and the Cost of Housing. The value of land is fundamentally determined 'ay its econoxaic rent. Since economic rent is the actual or potential income attributable to land, the value of land is, in the absence of other considerations, the capitalized value of the economic rent. When the value of land is made "the basis of direct taxation, the economic rent is divided betv/een the ovmer and the government. Thus v/hat we speak of as value is simply the ov/ner's rent capitalized. The value of land is determined therefore not only by its actual or potential income, but by the prevailing rate of interest, on the basis of which the rent is capitalized. I have already spoken of the influence of taxation on land values, but now v/e can determine more accurately hov great this influence is. Suppose we take the value of the land as V, then the owner's rent is this value multiplied by tLie prevailing rate of interest or^ Vi . Then the Government's share of the rent may be represented by Vt, or the value multiplied by the tax rate. The total econoraic rent is then Vi plus Vt. Then let us take the value v;hich the land would have if it were not taxed at all, as U or the untaxed value. _^ Then Ui is the economic rent. Ve now have the equation Vi + Vt - Ui from which we get U = ^( ^ ) -"^ Assuming for the sake of simplicity that land is assessed at its true value and assuming that the prevailing interest rate is 5 per cent, we have then in New York in 1921, V equal to p. 295, 000,000; i equal to .05 and t eoual to .0277, we find that the untaxed value of the land in Manhattan in 1921 was ^3,295,000,000 multiplied by 7.77 or $5,120,000,000. Correcting this on the basis of ■ ^ a 95 per cent assessment the untaxed value is $5,300,000,000. How by the same process va th a correction for the difference in the ratio of assessed valuation, the untaxed value of the same land in 1906 was $4,170,000,000. In other words, if no taxes at all had been imposed and all otlier factors had remained the same, laaniiattan land values instead of increasing less than two per cent in sixteen years would have increased 27 per cent in the same period. This shows that in lilanhattan the laaid has been taxed so high in the past sixteen years as to absorb practically the whole net increment in value. A further increase in the tax rate would further depress values, and, as we know, a tax which would absorb the "hole rental value of the land would be equivalent to complete confiscation. It would, however, be very difficult to absorb the whole rental value of the land simply by increasing the tax rate. This can be shown ^j-j a modification of the fonnula given above. 1) This formula is taken from a study nov; in preparation by Mr. CB. Thompson of Columbia University. -139- Suppose a single tax administration in its effort to taKe the full rental value of the land imposes a tax of five per cent on land with exemption of improvements. Let us suppose that U, the untaxea .- - (i+t) .r = i_i_l U value, remains constant. Then sim e u (1~)' (i+t) or $5,300,000,000 multiplied by -—-7 or l/2. The taxed value would, therefore, be reduced to $2,650,000,000 and the yield of the tax would be only $132»500,000 as compared with the present tax yield on land and buildings of $151, 500 ,000 . A tax of ten per cent on land values would cause a reduction in value to $1,770,000,000 and would yield only $25,000,000 more than the present tax on land and buildings. It is evident, hov/ever, that in l^evr York, the single tax on land values, if the difficulties of collection could be overcome, would yield more revenue than is produced by the present rate of taxation on land and buildings. Assuming that the prevailing rate of interest is five -oer cent, the total economic rent according to our formula is $256,100,000 in Manhattan, $69,600,000 in Brooiclyn, $28,600,000 in the Bronx. $24,300,000 in q,ueens and s^4,600,000 m Richmond. The T)resent tax yield on land and buildings is $151,500,000 in Manhattan, $65,600,000 in Brooklyn. $21,800,000 m the Bronx, $13,400,000 in C,ueens and $3,300,000 in Richmond. This gives as the ratios of liie present tax to the economic rent, 59 in Manhattan, 91 In Brooklyn, 76.5 in tiie Bronx, 76 in Queens and 73 in Riclimond. For the whole city the economic rent in 1921 was $383,100,000 and the tax yield $258,700,000 a ratio of 67.5. If _ the prevailing interest rate is taken as four per cent the economic rent would still have been greater than the 1921 taxes in all the boroughs with the exception of Brooklyn, in which borou^. there would have been a deficit of about $3,000,000- The economic rent of vacant land is potential, determined by the anticipated rental of the laiid as it will later be improved. As we have seen, very little vacant land yields interest on the price at which it is held through net increments in value. Nor does improved land always yield an income equal to its full economic rent. The improvement must be adapted to the land improved. The construction and operation of buildings is a business in itself and one viiich requires a high type of ability and judgment-^ In every city a very large proportion of the buildings are eitlier inadequate, obsolete, misplaced or improperly designed for the purpose for which they T;eTe built. ¥.o such building v/ould yield rentals or personal satisfactions sufficient to pay for operating exper^es including interest and depreciation and in addition give to the ov/ner the economic rent cf the land. For example there is the "tax payer" building, a one or tvro story brick or frame build- ing, built temporarily on land which would support a block of ten or more stories. There are old buildings which should be replaced by new buildings; there are residences surrounded by factories or office buildings, and massive stone fronts on store buildings which need large vvindows for display purposes. -140- In the TDast, "buildings have been constructed without fully counting the* cos t of operation. In particular the factor oi depreciation or amortization has been overlooked. It lias been assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that the increase i" ^"® value of the land would counterbalance the depreciation of the building. In the past the increase was frequently sufficient to take care of this factor. Columbia College has moved two or three times, and in each case is said to have profited by moving, as the land on which the buildings stood had become more valuable than the original cost of the land and buildings together. But as we have seen these land increments cannot be relied upon in the future . It is clear that a knowledge of the probable costs and income from land is of great significance to the land owner and the prospective home builder, but how about the vast majority m a city like New York who v/ill alv/ays remain tenants, and who may have no desire to own land*^ L\any people of wealth prefer apart- ments to houses and do not desire the responsibilities of real estate management. But more important is the bearing upon the problem of housing the working class. As a writer in the ¥.e^" Republic expresses it (Editorial, Sept. 8, 1920). "The great majority of our working population are no longer in condition to satisfy their housing requirements by the traditional method of self help. They cannot go long distances from their work. Their margins of time and income are too slender. Home ownership is out of the question There might be a solution in the cooperative ownership of multiple dwellings, but that presupposes a spirit of cooperation v;hich can not simply be evoked out of our old in- ^ dividualistic scheme of life, but can only be evolved with time. The worker must buy his housing as he can afford it. Under the present high carrying charges on land and buildings and the high cost of building materials, not only is the workingraan unable to ovm his own home but in large cities one or even tv;o family houses cannot be built to rent v/ith-'.n his rent paying^ capacity. The only solution is the multi ■ a:rdly house in \'*Lich the operating cost per family is reduced and which of course involves the use of a smaller area of land per family. If foi' example a six room house is built on land worth $2500, which would probably be the cheapest improved la.nd available, five percent interest on land value would amount to about $2,00 per room per month or ^12 per month for the house. In a fairly good residence district on the west side of Manhattan near 23rd Street, there is a six story- tenement of a good type which is occupied by families of approximately the same income as those who would live in^ a six room cottage in the Bronx or far out in Queens or Brooklyn. Here the land is valued at $30,000. Tliere are 21 rooms and six baths on each floor. Therefore on a five per cent basis the interest on land amounts to one dollar per room per month. -141- In view of the agitation for a different system of land taxation and land tenure it is very important to learn just v;hat effect the proposed changes v/ould have upon the •cost of housing. Ver^,- little material of tliis sort has ever been collected, but I have data in regard to tvo apartment houses in New York which seem to throv/ some light on the prolyl em. The first of these buildings _ is the tenement building referred to above. Here the land value is $30,000 and the building cost was $55,000. The costs are computed both for 1914, -and also estimated on the basis of present costs on a similar building constructed at the building cost of 1921. In- terest in both years is computed at 6 per cent. 1914 1921 Cost Per Room i'tr Cent Cost Per Room Per Cent per month per month Interest on land cost 1.25 15. 1.25 8. Interest on Building cost 2.25 27. 5.- 33. Taxes (Land and Building) 1.- 12. 1.50 10. Pue] .75 9. 1.50 10. Salaries and Ifenagement .60 7.+ 1.15 7. Repairs .55 7. 1.- 7. Insurance, V/ater, Gas, Sundries .25 3. .45 3« Lost rent 7 l/2^" .50 6. 1.- 7. Amortization 1.10 13. 2.25 15. ^ 8.25 100 $ 15.10 100. The other house is a five story tenement built in the Bronx on a lot fifty feet wide, valued at $19,000. The building cost in 1914 vras ^35,000. -142- 1914 1-921 Cost Per RoDin Per Cent Cost Per Room Per Cent P' er month per month Interest on Land .70 8 .70 5. Interest on "building 2.50 29 5.- 33. Taxes on land and Building .90 10 1.50 10. Fuel .75 9 1.50 10. Wages, management, etc. .30 9. 5 1.35 9. Insurance, V/ater, Gas, etc. .50 6. .75 4. Repairs .80 9. .5 1.50 10. Lost rent .40 5. .- .40 3. Amortization 1.20 14. .- 2.40 16. :^8.55 100.- 315.10 100.- These figures are of interest from several points of view. For one thing vie see that interest on the land and the taxes on land and building in the second talDle amounted to $1.60 in 1914 and $2.20 in 1921. If we assume that all land is ov/ned by the city and leased for its full rental value with the exception of "buildings from taxation, this land rent would evidently be sub- stituted for these items of interest and taxes. Prom our formula V(i+t) = $678 in 1914 or $783 in 1921. Dividing this by 1056 Ui the number of room months we have 0.64 as the economic rent per room per month in 1914 and $.74 in 1921. This would appear to indicate a monthly saving in costs of from $1.00 to $1.50 per room. But in 1914 imny apartments in this house rented for $7 per room per month. Depreciation or amortisation v;as not figured. The same would probably be true in 1921. At least few owners v;ould figure enough depreciation to reduce the excessive costs of building in 1921. The owners consciously ar unconsciously still count on the value increment of the land to cover the depreciation of the building. If they did not have this increment, depreciation would have to be figured in full, and in all probability there would be no saving in costs which could by any possibility result in lovjering the rentals of apartirents. In any case it is not at all certain that any saving vAiich could be effected in costs v/ould be passed on to the tenant. Re- lief to the tenant wo aid be more likely to come through a stimulation of building which would increase the number of apart- ments and thus by competition reduce rents. But here the risic incidental to uncertainty of future land rents, builders hesitate before investing tlieir money in buildings increased would make on -143- leased land. There might be a tendency to erect more buildings of an inferior type vhich v;ould yield a high return for a few years and which would not in themselves tend to increase tne rental value of the land by making the neighborhood more desirable. In view of the heavi-- costs of land holding it is probable tliat a large part of the land not ready for improveiaent would not be leased at all, thus forcing the city to assume the carrying charges. The speculations as to future conditions as a result of possible changes in the economic system are interesting but not very profitable. It is clear, however, that whatever may be the imper- fections and injustices of our present system, there are also dangers and pitfalls in the proposed systems and it is not at all certain that the change v;ould be for the better. The ground lease system as betv;een landowner and building owner is quite usual in English cities. This ground lease system approaches actual land ownership by the tenant when the lease is for 999 years at a very moderate rental, but there are also short tine leases, viaich may be renev;ed at an adjusted rental. This system is also quite common in New Yorlc. Many of the great land ov/ning estates and trusts such as tiie Sailor's Snug Harbor, Trinity Church, the Lorillard Estate, the As tor instate, Columbia College, ex.d others have leased their land holdings, usually through a tv/enty-one year renev;able ground lease. This lease system offers a very interesting field of investigation. The Sailor's Snug Harbor is a home for retired sailors, now located on Staten Island, where they own a tract of several hundred acres with an unusually find and complete group of institutional build- ings. The income of the institution comes largely from ground leases on several blocks in the heart of the old retail district of Nev/ York on both sides of Broadway and extending west to Jiftl. Avenue. This land land has been leased by the trustees of the institution on 21 year ground leat.es since 1827. The first leases of the Broadway lots were for renta,ls of around :|90 a year. At the first renewal ihese rents were increased to $350 a year. At the last renewal the ground rents averaged $4,000 to $5,000 a lot. This trust and also Trinity Church and the Lorillard estate which are also located in this part of the city, are by some held at least partly responsible for the removal of the business center of IJew York farther up town. The restrictions of the ground lease system, and the refusal of the trustees to improve property on their ovm account, resulted in a shortage of buildings adapted to modern business conditions. Many of the buildings in this section were from fifty to a hundred years old and still they could not be replaced by nev/ buildings- The result v;as that the whole business center moved bodily a mile and a half north. This explanation of the move is very interesting but there is also the undoubted fact that the new location of retail business is far better than the old location. The best residence sections v/ere already ■ still farther to the north and the Grand Central rail- way terminal was a Porty-Second Street. Later the great -144- Pennsylvania Terminal was located at Thirty- -chird Street and this with the development of subv/ays , including the Hudson Tube to Jersey'city, Koboken and Newark, gives to the new business section a strategic advantage v^ich the old section could never have had. In this course of lectures I have tried to present the most important findings of a year of research. I am aware that I have only dipped into the available material here and there. No great problems have been solved, but I do feel that these researches are worth continuing, and that at the present time this preliminary collecting of facts is mere important than the ambitious development of plans for changes in our system of land tenure and taxation without a broad basis of fact. -145- B THE LIBRARY University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. dt\ "^ Wi NOV 1 2004 Af m^ a RE 3 1158 00239 1067 uc SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIUTY D 000 976 376 4