The Private Ownership of Land [pp. 125-147]

THE PRI VA TE 0 WNER SHIP OF L AND.
world which are at present entirely uncultivated, because their
products would offer no inducement to any capitalist to expend
his capital in reclaiming them. This will not always continue
to be true. The time will at length come when a capitalist can
reclaim these lands as cheaply as he can purchase other lands
of equal productiveness. Then the rich bottoms of the Illinois
and Mississippi will be cultivated. But all economic writers are
agreed that the rent of any farm.will always be less than the
interest on the price at which it would be sold. Consequently
it will be at the outset and will continue true, that the rent of
that farm will be less than interest on the cost of its improve ments. As cultivation goes on new outlays will become neces sary, and no owner of that land will be able to realize from its
rents the interest of the cost of the improvements. It will re main perhaps for ages the richest land on the continent, but its
only value either for rent or sale will depend entirely upon the
capital expended in its improvements. What would Mr. Spen cer do with such a farm as this? Yet this farm differs in no
important particular from any other. The only apparent dif ference lies in the fact that we know the history of this farm in
respect to its improvements. Of other farms we cannot trace
the particular steps of their cultivation.
Mr. Henry George urges with great power of statement, and
to many readers plausibility of argument, that the natural productiveness of land is as truly the free gift of God to all men as
the air or the water. So it is. Who can deny it? Why then,
he argues, should any man be allowed to exact any compensation for its use, more than for the privilege of breathing the free
air of heaven? If the definition of rent which we have been
examining is to be accepted as a true account of the matter,
how can any satisfactory answer to this argument be given?
The only satisfactory answer that is possible is a denial of that
definition and of all its consequences. No such consideration
is or can be exacted. The nature of landed property forbids it.
The consideration which men call rent is not payment for the
use of the natural powers of the land, but for the labor invested in its improvement. For the most part, even in the
case of the best lands and those which require the least outlay
to prepare them for cultivation, that which is paid in the form
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