EARNED DECREASE VS. UNEARNED INCREMENT. 183 



must now emphatically remark that it really can not happen as 

 a merely private benefit at all any more than wealth can happen 

 as such. In a town of immensely rapid growth where this incre- 

 ment arises, the honest laborer and poor man who does not care 

 to acquire land, or does not foresee the opportunity open to him, 

 or can not command the means for doing it, still receives unpar- 

 alleled opportunities in any pursuit he follows there. Wherever 

 a so-called " unearned increment " arises, there society at large has 

 reaped connected benefits which have been widely distributed. It 

 would not be easy to set down how far this wave of advantage 

 spreads ; but we all know that it spreads very far, and that he is a 

 very dull or a very shiftless man, who lives where it starts, who 

 does not find some part of it beat over into his own cup, be it 

 large or small. And the trouble which would arise from despoil- 

 ing those who in a few instances have, by acquiring land, appar- 

 ently obtained too easy a profit, would be the killing of the goose 

 which had laid for the whole public the golden egg. It is more 

 than probable that the " unearned increment " which has come 

 to the land-owners in that Kansas town which has, in five years, 

 jumped from a population of five thousand to nearly forty thou- 

 sand, has gone in the largest measure to men who planned and 

 made the progress seen there possible. In places where this is 

 the case in a less degree, the effort to make things equal is a 

 problem too great for any but angels and seraphs to deal with. 

 No merely human device can touch it without breaking or de- 

 ranging the mainspring of civilization. Yet there are plenty of 

 fools who dare step in where angels fear to tread. The man who 

 burned up his barn filled with grain to destroy a hornets' nest is 

 not alone in the world. He now has a cult and a body of dis- 

 ciples. 



Seeing, as all may, how little land does for its owner every- 

 where, and for an owner who has the utmost possible incentive 

 that the strong motive of human selfishness supplies to enable 

 him to succeed (which the state could not have), what possible 

 hope can there be of any betterment of things by transferring 

 all land to the state or to society collectively ? Through what 

 magic or enginery is it that the state is to conduct all its farms 

 to a profit, and so rent city lots as to produce more benefits than 

 now exist ? No one not stricken with asinine idiocy can begin 

 to tell.* 



* It ought not to require any argument to see that every man who holds land to im- 

 prove it, or who buys worthless land to make it valuable, is the friend and not the enemy 

 of mankind. Private ownership of land, as it now exists, is largely a sacrifice for the 

 public good. For it must be remembered that it is not direct access to land that is in the 

 least degree necessary to any one individual, or to any one million of individuals. What 

 must be had is simply access to the products of food, raiment, and shelter which land 

 supplies. Now, if somebody else will do unprofitable soil-culture for my benefit, I will 



