148 AMERICAN FARMS. 



prices, and in the course of exchange are shifted from 

 seller to buyer, increasing as they go " * ; that the un- 

 earned increment attached to the value of land should 

 belong to the state ; that it is becoming impossible for 

 laborers to buy farms, and that, as a consequence, the 

 cities are being overcrowded. 



Neither the real-estate-tax advocate, who contends that 

 all taxes placed upon land values must finally rest upon 

 the consumer of the products raised from this land, nor 

 the one who claims that no tax upon land values can add 

 to prices, is, by any means, correct. This is where the 

 grand mistake is made. 



That all must consume the products of land is per- 

 fectly true, but that all must consume the products of 

 labor is also true. Professor Sumner's claim, that the 

 unearned increment is upon most property in a condition 

 of property, is probably not far from correct.'' 



The gathering of people about land increases the value 

 of land, the gathering of people on land creates a demand 

 for the products of, labor. One waits for his increment, 

 and the other takes it at the time he throws his products 

 on the market. The settler on land is induced to accept 

 a small immediate return for the products of his land, 

 looking to the more remote benefits to be derived through 

 the increasing value of his lands as neighbors surround 

 him ; the fabricator of the materials extracted from land 

 receives his unearned increment at once. 



That the power of this increment on farm land may be 

 over-estimated, as compared with the productiveness of 

 other industries, is seen now by the relatively impoverished 

 condition of the peasant proprietors of Europe, in their 



' "The Canons of Taxation," p. 2. 

 * "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other." 



