Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/452

434 located upon, or brought to subsist or employ, movable property; and, as a rule, the more it employs or subsists, the more valuable it becomes; and the greater the inducements or attractions it offers movable property, the more it will have to locate upon it"; citing in proof and illustration the fact that the best acre of land in America is worth nothing till man goes upon it with his axe, horse, cow, etc., and puts it in cultivation and brings it to subsist himself, horse, cow, etc.; and from that moment it commences to have a value, by reason of the fact that it employs or subsists the man (who, if he can be called property at all, is certainly movable property) as well as the horse, cow, etc. And if this acre of ground for any cause should become attractive to and employ double the amount of movable property, it will as a general rule become doubly valuable; and so on, if it should become attractive to and employ profitably ten or a hundred or a thousand fold more movable property, it would become in like ratio more valuable, even up to the value of millions of dollars per acre, by reason of the fact that it offers attractions, and has employed upon it profitably five, ten, or fifteen millions of dollars' worth of movable property. Of course, when ground gets beyond a certain value it must be put to other uses than agriculture, and just this process acres of ground have doubtless passed through since the Dutch first landed on Manhattan Island.

There are exceptions to this rule—that immovable property is valuable as it has movable property employed directly on it—for it frequently has a greater value than movable property employed directly on it would warrant. It has a value reflected from the employment of movable property employed on immovable property near by, as in the case of residences in or near cities. For instance, the use of movable property on a Broadway lot gives a great value to the merchant's residence up town, by reason of the fact that it is sufficiently near and convenient for it to be in demand for the transaction of business daily at his store, all of which is attributable to the employment of movable property at the store.

The thrift or profit which immovable property offers to movable property helps to regulate its value. For instance, a man owns two pieces of property alike, say in different towns, rented out to merchants of equal capital; one is enabled to make seven per cent per annum only on his capital, for the reason that he has to pay three per cent tax on his capital, and the other makes ten per cent net, and pays no tax. The property paying ten per cent will be the most valuable, for it will pay the largest rent, because there will be more applicants for it than for the seven per cent; and the law of supply and demand governing, it must rent for more. It is, however, impossible, as a general thing, for these two merchants to remain of