652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ous on the surface that there is a real point for discussion. Under 

 the essential conditions of modern life, principally the concentra- 

 tion of huge masses on narrow room, competition among laborers 

 undoubtedly produces monopoly rent, the payment of which is 

 a simple deduction from the gross money wages which work- 

 men receive. If workmen, to avoid paying more than they can 

 help, live at a distance from their work, they only escape the evil 

 partially, because charges for conveyance to and from their work 

 have to be paid. Clearly workmen under such conditions, as com- 

 pared with conditions under which no monopoly rent or its equiv- 

 alent has to be paid, are at a disadvantage. To show their real 

 position for the purpose of comparison, the monopoly portion of 

 the rent must be deducted. It is quite obvious, also, on the merest 

 superficial aspect of the question, that as regards many workmen, 

 at least, the disadvantage may easily be so serious as to compen- 

 sate, and more than compensate, all the difference between the 

 money wage of the country, where there is no monopoly rent, and 

 the money wage of the town. Take the case of a west Highland 

 peasant fifty years ago, living on a scanty wage of a few shillings 

 a week, or the produce of a poor croft eked out by kelp-gathering 

 or fishing, and his descendant at the present time in the slums of a 

 great city, earning perhaps fifteen shillings a week, but disbursing 

 four or five shillings for rent. The improvement in money earnings 

 may be immense, perhaps one hundred per cent, and as regards 

 prices of commodities there may be no drawback in the change, but 

 the rent takes a monstrous cantle out of the margin. Comparing 

 all the conditions, it may certainly be doubted whether the peasant, 

 in the case supposed, in exchanging the hard life of the country, 

 which still had the advantage of being in the open, for the hard 

 life of the city, has made any real advance. Take a case higher 

 in the scale. A doctor, to earn a living, resides in a city rather 

 than in the country, pays a huge monopoly rent to begin with, 

 and incurs many other analogous expenses, so that altogether he 

 has a large leeway to make up before he can reckon that net 

 income which can properly enter into comparison with that of his 

 country colleague. The difference may easily be so great, I be- 

 lieve, that in many cases a professional man in a small country 

 town with three or four hundred pounds a year may have a 

 larger net income for the real objects of life, dealing with the 

 question in a wise, philosophic spirit, than a professional man in 

 London with a thousand or twelve hundred pounds a year. There 

 are differences even between London and smaller provincial cities. 

 Thus the question between gross and net, which workingmen 

 have raised in these discussions, apropos of monopoly rent or the 

 equivalent, is a real question. It is a new form of the old theo- 

 rem that people may buy gold too dear. 



