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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

How "Land" gets Value

How "Land" gets Value.

But even these qualities of virgin soil are of no use or value unless they are found in accessible positions; and their advantage to the proprietor of the land increases rapidly as human society develops in their neighborhood; whilst in all advanced societies we find large areas of town lands whose usefulness and value have nothing to do with their soils, but are due entirely to the social existence and activity of man. Land in Cornhill, worth a million pounds an acre, owes its value to the world-wide industry and commerce whose threads are brought together there, not to its natural fertility or to the attractions of its climate. "Prairie value" is a fiction. Unpopulated land has only a value through the expectation that it will be peopled.

The "natural capabilities of land are thus increased, and, indeed, even called into existence, by the mere development of society. But, further, every toot of agricultural and mining land in England has been improved as an instrument of production by the exercise of human labor.

First, of human labor not on that land itself; by the improvement ot the general climate, through clearing of forest and draining page 3 of marsh; by the making of canals, roads, railways, rendering every part of the country accessible; by the growth of villages and towns, by the improvement of agricultural science; and still more by the development of manufactures and foreign commerce. Of all this human labor, no man can say which part has made the value of his land, and none can prove his title to monopolise the value it has made.

Secondly, all our land has been improved by labor bestowed especially upon it. Indeed, the land itself, as as instrument of production, may be quite as truly said to be the work of man as the gift of Nature. Rverv farm or garden, every mine or quarry, is saturated with the effects of human labor. Capital is everywher infused into and intermixed with land. Who distinguishes from th mine the plant by which it exists? Who distinguishes from th farm the lanes, the hedges, the gates, the drains, the buildings, th farm-house? Certainly not the English man of business, be h landlord, farmer, auctioneer, or income tax commissioner. Only the bold bad economist attempts it, and, we must add, some few amongst our allies, the Land Nationalises. It may be worth while to digress for a while in the company of these latter.