120 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



ing good land to remain unused and to produce tramps on virgin 

 acres and breed paupers on half -tilled soils. He demonstrated that 

 speculation in producing high land values checked production and 

 leSvSened the returns due to labour and capital. As a remedy, he 

 said, "We must make land common property,"* and, as a method, he 

 proposed the appropriation of all rent, by abolishing "all taxation 

 save that upon land values." While not enquiring into the merit 

 of applying that remedy as a cure for the social evils produced by the 

 present system of ownership, or perhaps, to be more correct, we 

 should say produced by the absence of proper regulation of that 

 system, we may venture to doubt the practicability of applying it 

 in a country where the great majority of the citizens are private own- 

 ers. In any case, having regard to that fact, we may anticipate a long 

 delay before any such radical departure is inaugurated, even with 

 such modifications as may remove all elements of confiscation from 

 any process by which the result is to be secured. 



So long as we have private ownership, the urgent necessity is to 

 control it in the public interest to properly regulate the use of pri- 

 vately owned lands and to determine their correct value in relation to 

 improvements. A large portion of the land of Canada is still public do- 

 main, and the process of alienation to private owners continues. This 

 land is granted as homesteads, on the assumption that it possesses 

 practically no value except that which may be given to it by the enter- 

 prise and energy of the settler. If, in process of time, the land so alien- 

 ated should increase in value, owing to the presence of population in 

 its neighbourhood, it would be possible to tax that increased value, 

 and, indeed, to obtain the greater portion of the increment for the bene- 

 fit of the community. But, so long as the government recognizes 

 private ownership by granting homesteads or selling land, it cannot 

 equitably seize the rental value of land previously alienated as a means 

 of converting such land to common ownership. If common ownership 

 is best, the first step to secure it should be the retention by the gov- 

 ernment of the land now held by the Crown. But while the govern- 

 ment continues its present policy it may be asked whether anything 

 can be gained in advocating the social injustice of confiscation of 

 rent by taxation of land values. 



Henry George did not deny that there might be "improvements 

 which, in time, might become indistinguishable from the land itself." 

 Whether admitted or not, such improvements as streets, sewers, 

 sidewalks, etc., do come within this category, as, owing to our 



* Progress and Poverty, Book VI, Chapter II The True Remedy. 



