Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/154

 difficulties, was an immediate general advance, amounting to about ten per cent., in the value of all metropolitan property. This was caused, so far as regarded those outside areas which were inferred to lie beyond range of the proposed sanitary reconstruction, by the improved prospects gratuitously falling to their lot through the renovation of the more central areas. But so far as regarded those doomed areas themselves, the said advance in value was caused by the confident feeling that all parties would be dealt with in a liberal spirit, in whatever way the trust decided to proceed. The trust decided to recognize, and support as a basis, this ten per cent. advance. The value, just prior to announcement of the project, was taken as accurately as might be, and ten per cent. was added to it, in consideration of any possible discount at first in the market value of the trust-stock issues, and also on the general consideration of disturbance.

The trust, then, paid its way by the issue of stock as required. This stock was always readily floated at the moderate interest of three per cent. The national consols were, by this time, as we have said, a two-and-a-half-per-cent. stock, so that this trust stock, although occasionally at a slight discount at first upon any great pressure of sales, rose eventually to a substantial premium. All proprietors were exhorted rather to hold to their properties than sell them to the trust. They would thus co-operate with the trust in the resanitation, and would be liberally assisted in so doing by pecuniary advance, as required, in the form of stock from the trust. In those other cases where the parties preferred to sell, or where they