PROGRESS AND POVERTY. 731 



productiveness. Labor spent on this land can produce results not only 

 vastly greater than it could on land beyond the boundaries of this 

 population, but results that it could not produce at all beyond those 

 boundaries. As the village grows into the city, the nearness of men to 

 each other, the division of labor that becomes possible, the greater econ- 

 omies that follow in consequence, the immense facilities of exchange, 

 increase the effectiveness of- labor exerted in the center of population 

 enormously. Here is the market to buy and sell ; here the seiwices of 

 the professional man, the tradesman, of any and everybody, become 

 of much greater value to them than they could possibly be elsewhere. 

 Instead of a few men working over a piece of ground, here ai'e multi- 

 tudes of men to the acre, on floors one above another, producing vastly 

 more than the same number could over a wider area. All these ad- 

 vantages adhere to the land — to this particular land in the center of 

 industry, and these advantages have to be paid for. By the law of 

 rent, all the produce resulting from this increased effectiveness of la- 

 bor and ease of exchange — that is, more than what the same labor and 

 capital could procure on land free to them — goes to the landholder. 

 Population, then, as it becomes dense, enormously increases rent. 



And the increase of improvements in the arts affects rent in the 

 same way. All labor-saving machines can affect production in one 

 of two ways. Production may remain the same, and a certain amount 

 of labor be set free, or the same amount of labor may be used, and 

 production be increased. In an active civilization like ours, the main 

 effect will be in the latter way. For, by the conditions of industry, 

 labor can not take advantage of its increased effectiveness by resting, 

 but must press for employment, and hence the effect of labor-saving 

 devices will be to increase the wealth produced. But to the produc- 

 tion of wealth land is necessary, hence the demand for land must 

 constantly increase, steadily forcing down the margin of cultivation. 

 Thus, without any augmentation of the population, rent is advanced. 



In the speculative rise in the value of land, there is a further 

 force acting in the same direction as these others. In every growing 

 community there is a confidence that land will increase in value, which 

 leads to the holding of land for such increase. This speculative rise 

 in the value of land shows itself in higher rents. 



In this speculative increase of land-values, Mr. George finds the 

 primary cause of those periodic depressions of industry which we 

 term " hard times." The essential feature of such a period is the cir- 

 cumstance of numbers of men, able and willing to work, seeking em- 

 ployment vainly ; great masses of capital lying idle ; quantities of 

 goods in warehouses and stores unsalable. It is not that produc- 

 tive power has been too active ; it is not that consumption has been 

 too great. The over-production and over-consumption theories have 

 never been satisfactory. Economists have seen that, as the very 

 object of industry is to produce wealth, there can never be too much 



