Page:The Land Question.djvu/12

12 touch the case of an expanding town where new leases have to be made, and where the landowner has it in his power to demand what price he chooses for the land, or even to prohibit the growth of the town altogether, because he prefers a country solitude. Districts outside London and other growing places thirty years ago produced the landlord a rental of two or three pounds per acre as market-garden; the industry of the community, and not the action of the landlord, has made the land worth perhaps a hundred times as much; and in my humble opinion the community, say the municipality, of a growing town ought to have the power to take up the land around it, just as a Railway Company might, at an equitable value to be fixed by some public authority. I say an equitable value, and by that I do not mean either an agricultural value on the one side, or a fancy value on the other; but such a price as an owner desiring to sell would accept from an ordinary purchaser. The community, as it expanded, would then be its own landlord; and the increased value in the land would fall to the benefit of those whose activity had produced it, and not to the landlord, who has sat still. I would say that as soon as a town has gained a population of say five thousand, it should be entitled to take possession of a belt or area of land immediately around it at a fair price; and that as the population increased the area should proportionately expand. The land might then either be built upon by the municipality and let to tenants, or be sold in plots for the citizens to make their own buildings. There would be this further advantage, that the suburbs of growing towns would then be planned and laid out by some responsible authority, instead of being left to the speculative builder as tempered by the uncertain and fluctuating action of local and sanitary boards.

Farmers, Landlords, and Labourers.

And now let us leave the towns and go into the country. The agricultural system of England rests, as you know, on a triple division of classes. The landlord owns the ground, and puts a considerable amount of capital into it, as a rule erecting the buildings and paying for the material in all improvements; the farmer also puts a large quantity of capital into the land and superintends its cultivation; the labourer does the actual bodily work. Now