Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/87

 "in the position of a man who holds the keys of life, and he consequently can exact a maximum toll as his price. He does so." Does he, under modern conditions, hold the keys of life any more than, for example, the coal-miner? Does not competition in each case, when it is allowed to work, come to the rescue of the consumer or tenant? If all the land were owned by one owner he might be able to exact the maximum toll. But it is not so, and competition between its owners gives a chance to those who want to hire it. And yet at the bottom of the matter the fact that land was made by nature, while all other forms of property owe something to man's effort in their production and use, makes the receivers of rent especially liable to attack when the rights of property are in question. Rent that is derived from work put into the land is of course indistinguishable from ordinary interest on capital. But when it is paid just because a site is thought to be especially desirable by the community, or because somebody else has built a railway through it or near it, the case for special taxation of the increment is strong; though that increment differs only in degree from the windfalls which are given, for example, to owners of stocks of black dress materials when