EARNED DECREASE VS. UNEARNED INCREMENT. 179 



is there any way to apply this remedy if it were an effectual 

 one. 



Again — to refer to the farmer once more — the land of a farm 

 well tilled is not only now thoroughly mixed with the farmer's 

 toil and skill in the improvement of its constituents, but it is 

 covered with buildings, fences, ditches for drainage, and wells, 

 that represent his hard-earned labor or his free capital applied 

 to it. Can he get its whole value back when his estate is settled, 

 or if he wishes to retire or remove ? Very rarely — almost never, 

 in fact. Other business plants that have been well handled usually 

 sell out at a profit, more or less. But the farm goes off at the 

 sacrifice of an " earned decrease." Two farms within a half -day's 

 ride of the place where I am writing, in one of the best soiled and 

 best settled counties in the State of New York, have lately been 

 sold (not under legal constraint) for less than half what they and 

 their improvements originally cost, involving losses respectively 

 of from eight to ten thousand dollars. And this is not a strange 

 or infrequent thing. It, or something like it, is one of the com- 

 monest of modern occurrences. But do we hear any school of 

 philosophers agitated about these losses ? Society, in some way, 

 has unbuilt or leveled their value by just as responsible doings 

 as it has by worthy and rewardable doings built up the city lot. 

 • If it is to have the fat meat in its pudding, on what principle 

 can it free itself from responsibility for the lean ? Can society 

 or the state play at seesaw with the owners of land ? Can it say, 

 " Heads I win and tails you lose," and ever undertake hereafter 

 to talk about right and virtue and honesty ? If it should ever 

 hanker after the " unearned increment," there should go with it 

 when it is passed over an accounting for the " earned decrease." 



That this is not a small matter, a reference to the New Eng- 

 land " hill-farms," so called, will amply show. In hundreds of 

 towns there, from which the population has withdrawn itself to 

 aggrandize certain factory towns, or to develop the West, the 

 whole farming area has met with an irremediable loss. Farms 

 can be bought for far less there than their surface improvements 

 alone cost. A friend of mine bought a productive farm of one 

 hundred and sixty acres in Massachusetts a few years ago, with 

 a good house, barn, and other fixtures upon it — and he did not 

 pay the price that the ham alone cost ! Purchases of farms at a 

 similar advantage can be made to any extent in New England, 

 not far from pleasant country villages and near railroads, and 

 there is no place in Massachusetts that is over twelve miles from 

 a railroad. This means getting the land itself for less than noth- 

 ing, which is on better terms than Henry George's creed calls 

 for. In addition to his land, my friend had the house and 

 fences, and some other things, thrown in. And yet the millennium 



