Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/531

Rh It is no doubt true that he did not anticipate any such result, but is it not a logical consequence of a plan for seizing upon the rental value of land?

"But," say our land theorists, "land in favorable situations, and specially in or near great cities, brings enormous prices, not because of labor given to the land or of improvements built upon it, but for the reason that its situation makes it in demand and competition brings up the price. This land increased in value because of enterprises initiated often by persons not owners of the land, being an increase of value not due to the owner of the land, not because of anything he has planned or brought about, not as the result of his labor, skill, sagacity, or enterprise, but because of other people's labor, skill, and enterprise, and which becomes a tax that the community, as a whole, pays to the owner of the ground. Assuredly this is unjust. Why should men be allowed to grow enormously rich by lying still and simply retaining possession of their land?"

This is all true. I have spoken of value being due to labor or conditions, and here we have value that arises from demand, which is one form of conditions, just as the value of innumerable other things arises from demand. At first sight the position of the land theorists appears here to be very plausible; but there is nothing new in it. John Stuart Mill dwelt on the apparent injustice of what he calls unearned increment; but Mill saw that the appropriation by the state of this increment could not be accomplished without greatly disturbing the whole structure of society. He never even proposed a plan for the appropriation of this increase in the future, let alone of violently seizing upon a form of wealth that had grown up under the sanction of the laws.

But, after all, what is the difference between unearned increment in land and unearned increment in other kinds of property? All natural products are the bounty of Nature just as land is, and, like land, often yield to their possessors an unearned profit. Shall the Government compel all holders of wool, sugar, grain, iron, cotton, fish, lumber, and other products, to surrender through the machinery of a tax all profits that come from an increased demand for these articles? Unearned increment in products being often the result of conspiracies and schemes to the detriment of the public, its confiscation would be much more just than the confiscation of the increased value of land. The owner of land can not by his own personal efforts increase its value except by acts of advantage to the community—by building railroads, by erecting desirable buildings, by fostering industries; whereas the owner of products can not by his own personal efforts increase their value except by producing a "corner," by making them scarce, and thereby imposing a tax on consumers. Our theorists are really at war with a comparatively innocent form of unearned increment, but shut their eyes to a guilty form of it.

Unearned increment is commonly a direct tax upon society and