EARNED DECREASE VS. UNEARNED INCREMENT. 181 



earth, the land on which peoiile lived and moved rose to a fabu- 

 lous value, the profit of which seemed to go to a few exclusively. 

 The man who owns a lot in London sees it double and quadruple 

 in value, and then double and quadruple in value again many 

 times, not by any improvements he puts upon it, nor by any 

 labor which he himself does, but simply by the increase of popu- 

 lation about him, and the demands growing out of the multiplied 

 business and wants which a population unparalleled in numbers 

 creates. According to Mill and Spencer,* it is society, then, which 

 makes this value of the land, and not the owner of the land. The 

 increase which befalls it is not earned by him, but is the result 

 of the growth of society. Why not, then, give back to society 

 what society makes ? In looking at England away from Lon- 

 don, and at Scotland, the land problem is, in addition to this in- 

 crement, made complicate by absurd laws of entail and transfer 

 beyond anything which any other civilized country knows. Out 

 of all this aggravation, a part of which can be reached by the 

 modification of or the repeal of unjust laws, the "unearned 

 increment " was suggested. 



But neither Mill nor Spencer proposed to restore equality 

 where they indicate inequalities by a wholesale system of spolia- 

 tion on the innocent owners. They have not spoken of the wick- 

 edness of owning land by comparing it with the ownership of 

 slaves, and in the same breath alleging that a full rental tax, 

 a confiscation tax, indeed, will leave every man's ownership un- 

 impaired. These are the absurdities which have been let loose 

 in America only, where land can still be had for the asking, and 

 where the appalling problem is for the man who owns land to 

 compete — other things being equal — with the man who is not so 

 unfortunate. It was said jocosely once, by a newspaper humor- 

 ist, that a man living on a small, rocky farm in Maine, on an 

 unfrequented road, felt visibly ashamed one day when a well- 

 dressed traveler (as he stood in the front yard) passed his door 

 and looked somewhat inquisitively at the dilapidated house and 

 out-of- joint fences. As the traveler drew nearer, the supposed 

 proprietor hastened to remark : " I am not so durned poor as ye 

 think I be, neighbor ; I don't own this 'ere land ! " The joke is 

 now too universal to be any longer humorous to the average 

 land-owner. 



Suppose we were to admit that some injustice exists in the 

 irregular distribution of the rapid increase of land -values in 

 large towns. The inequality is one which no legislation could 



* After calling this spirit from the " vasty deep," both Mill and Spencer failed to lay 

 it, or to suggest any means whereby it could be placated. Allodial ownership, whether 

 rightful or wrongful in the beginning, was to them at this present moment a right and a 

 fact too overwhelming to be whisked away by a mere breath of metaphysical analysis. 



