Page:Old Towns and New Needs.djvu/84

 he does only pay 8d, for that little plot. When I said that the overcrowding of land is uneconomical and unprofitable to the owners of land as a whole, I did not say that nobody made profit out of it. What really happens is that the land speculator develops the land on the lines laid out in scheme No. 1, but instead of letting it at 8d. per week per plot, he lets it at 9d. or 10d. per week per plot, and the greater the number of houses, the greater the number of pennies and twopences per week which falls to his share of profit. But, assuming that we always get our plots after paying the landlord for the land at the nett cost price of the plot, then I say, even so, the tenant would be better off paying 11&frac34;d, for the big plot shown in scheme No. 2 than paying 8d. for the little plot shown in scheme No. 1. But supposing that the economic conditions should work out in the opposite extreme and that the owners of land as a body only receive under the new system to be brought in by Town Planning the same total increment that they would have received under the old overcrowding system: let us see what the result would be, again basing our calculations on the increase of Manchester.

With 15 houses to the acre we shall now absorb: