302 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



for land. This increasing desire for land makes rents and land 

 values high. The logical order is as follows : A scarcity of good 

 land makes a scarcity of agricultural products relative to the de- 

 mand for them. A scarcity of agricultural products relative to 

 the demand for them makes high prices. High prices for agri- 

 cultural products make farmers prosperous and increase their de- 

 sire for agricultural land. This increased desire or demand for 

 land and the scarcity of its supply make high rents. In other 

 words, the price paid for the use of a piece of land, like the 

 price of anything else, is an indication of its desirableness ; and 

 the desirableness of a piece of land depends in part upon how 

 much one may make from its use, and this in turn depends in 

 part upon the price of its products. 



The single tax. In the minds of certain social reformers, 

 known as "single taxers," the rent of land is not earned by 

 the landowners. In justification of this position they begin by 

 distinguishing very sharply between land and improvements 

 on it. Land, in the sense of the original and indestructible 

 properties of the earth's surface, is not at all the product of 

 any man's labor, frugality, or forethought, but is a free gift of 

 nature. It becomes the property of a man not because a man 

 makes it, but because he appropriates it. Having appropriated 

 it, and being protected by others, that is, by society, in its 

 possession, it becomes his legal property and he can there- 

 after exclude others from its use or exact a payment from them 

 therefor. This payment which he exacts becomes an income, 

 which is not a payment for any service which he has rendered 

 to society or to the world. It is otherwise with the improve- 

 ments upon the land. When the land is drained and thereby 

 made more productive, the man who does the draining is ren- 

 dering a service. As a result of his work the world has some- 

 thing which it would otherwise not have had, but the naked 

 land was there anyway, and the world has nothing new by 



