750 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1913. 



restrictions for $1,633,000, thus reaping from its transaction 804 

 acres of land, $242,000 in money, and the lowest tax rate in Wur- 

 temburg. 



Land prices may be similarly restrained or commimities can demo- 

 cratically share the advantages accruing from the unearned incre- 

 ment of land by means of cooperative development. The Copartner- 

 ship Tenants Societies formed by artisans, mechanics, and clerks in 

 some 20 British cities, have thus bought patches of suburban land, 

 from 10 to 300 acres in size, at reduced cost per unit ; have developed 

 such land cooperatively at reduced cost per unit for architect's serv- 

 ices, laying of streets, plumbing, sewerage, etc.; have built their 

 houses cooperatively, purchasing materials for 50 or more houses 

 at once at considerably reduced costs. Each tenant pays rent for his 

 cottage home to the Copartnership Tenants Society to which he and 

 his neighbors belong, and receives his profits (aside from 5 per cent 

 interest earned by his share capital) in the form of dividends on 

 rents, paid not in cash but shares of stock in the society. The un- 

 earned increment of the land is the common property of the coop- 

 erating members and enhances their profits. The Harborne Copart- 

 nership Society in its garden suburb on the outskirts of Birmingham, 

 England, was formed by workingmen who to-day pay rents for these 

 cottage homes at rates no higher than they paid previously for in- 

 sanitary slum tenements in the city. Yet this society is already able 

 to pay 8 per cent dividends on rents in addition to the regular 5 per 

 cent interest on invested capital. The British workingmen have, 

 however, had more experience in cooperative methods than have the 

 American workingmen. 



This method of cheapening and facilitating suburban development 

 is not applicable here without an intermediate period of careful 

 study of cooperative methods by the workingmen who plan the 

 association, and preferably should not be tried until they have had 

 some experience in some form of cooperative practice. Garden sub- 

 urbs of this character in England and in Germany have been fa- 

 cilitated by cheap loans of capital from philanthropists and from 

 the governments of these countries. If capital might be obtained 

 from some source at 4 per cent interest for building loans, and if the 

 experiment had the backing of influential citizens, it would be much 

 easier to make it a success. 



A third means of reducing the cost of land per cottage would be by 

 use of the land t^x already described. If the tax were taken off 

 improvements and placed exclusively upon the land, the vacant land 

 now held in the suburbs by speculators would be placed upon the 

 market or built upon. It is probable that land under such condi- 

 tions would be more readily available to modest purchasers in the 

 suburbs, and in so far would make suburban housing possible. 



