Page:The State and the Slums.djvu/20

16 The truth probably is that the cost of 17s. per square foot was made up of payment to the ground landlord, and compensation not only to the immediate lessor of the tenements, but to the holders of interests intervening between the ground freehold and the tenement owner. To these sums we should also have to add the cost of demolition, so that land whose net value, unbuilt on, might be only 10s. a foot, would easily come to 17s. before it was cleared. As to 3s. 4d. a foot "sold with the obligation to build workmen's dwellings," if the land is worth 10s. for commercial purposes, it would be sheer robbery to force a sale for 3s. 4d. because it happened to be wanted for workmen's lodgings. Land, like any other commodity, is worth as much as it will fetch in open market; and if philanthropists or social Utopia-mongers want land in the heart of a great city, they must pay the market price for it, and not fix a low fancy price, any more than they would allow the owner to fix a high fancy price.

It seems, then, that we may safely assume the following propositions. First, ground landlords are not, and cannot be as a rule, directly responsible for the use made of house property. Secondly, they are indirectly responsible only in so far as the use made of such property contravenes covenants in the leases on which it is held. Thirdly, the compensation value in cases where demolition has to take place includes the cost of demolition, and compensation for all interests, primary, derivative, and ultimate. The first of these principles negatives Mr. Chamberlain's dogma