Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/584

 57 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

soil itself or to capital invested in the soil, or even to buildings and other permanent improvements. The nearest approach, perhaps, that we have to such statistics is found in the English income tax.

As the English income-tax returns do not classify land and improvements separately, but together, as is the common practice else- where, the author seems to have been misled by the fact that the English income-tax schedule has the two items " Lands " and " Houses." But the item " Lands " comprises only agricultural land, and includes the farmhouses located upon it, while the item " Houses " includes not only dwelling-houses, but workshops and places of busi- ness, and the land upon which these are located. On p. 179 we find quoted from Growth of Capital Sir Robert Giffen's estimates of the value of property in the United Kingdom based upon the income-tax returns, in which there is shown a decrease of 15.7 per cent, in the value of property returned as " Lands," and an increase of 35.7 per cent, in the value of that returned as " Houses." As the author does not explain this matter, the reader is almost certain to accept the author's erroneous conclusion that land values as a whole have decreased. Mulhall's estimates of the value of house property in 1887, a ls based on the income-tax returns, are somewhat greater than Giffen's. He explains that it must not be supposed that the increase shown has been expended on new houses, the value of sites which is included having risen remarkably. 1

Commenting upon the fall in property values, Sir Robert Giffen says:

In cases where there is absolute diminution of money capital, such as lands, farmers' profits, mines, and iron works, there has been notoriously a great fall in prices ; while in regard to the two latter classes of property at least there has been a great increase in production, so that the apparent dimi- nution of property shown must be nominal, not real. 2

That is, values being relative, prices of those things for which the landholder expends his income having fallen, the real value and rent even of agricultural land have not fallen. Even were it true that rent has fallen in England, it is difficult to understand the propriety of the general conclusion drawn by this author. Though the English income- tax statistics do not furnish data of land and buildings separately, we have such statistics in the assessments of Massachusetts, which the author has strangely overlooked. In this state it has since 1886 been the custom to assess land and buildings separately, and, as it is also the

1 Dictionary of Statistics, p. 591. 2 Growth of Capital, p. 51.