Henry George

“ Population still keeps on increasing, giving greater and greater utility to the land, and more and more wealth to its owner. The town has grown into a city - a St. Louis, a Chicago or a San Francisco - and still it grows. Production is here carried on upon a great scale, with the best machinery and the most favourable facilities; the division of labour becomes extremely minute, wonderfully multiplying efficiency; exchanges are of such volume and rapidity that they are made with the minimum of friction and loss. ”

“ Increasing population increases rent without reference to the natural qualities of land, for the increased powers of cooperation and exchange which come with increased population give an increased capacity to land.
The increased power that comes with increased population brings out a superior power in labour which is localized on land-which attaches not to labour generally but only to labour exerted on particular land and which thus inheres in the land as much as any qualities of soil, climate, mineral deposit, or natural situation, and passes, as they do, with the possession of the land. ”

“ The wheatgrower may go further on and find land on which his labour will produce as much wheat, and nearly as much wealth. But the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper, the professional man, find that their labour expended here, at the centre of exchanges, will yield them much more than if expended even at a little distance away from it; and this excess of productiveness for such purposes the landowner can claim, just as he could an excess in its wheat-producing power. ”

“ So enormous are the advantages which this land now offers for the application of labour that instead of one man with a span of horses scratching over acres, you may count in places thousands of workers to the acre, working tier on tier, on floors raised one above the other, five, six, seven, and eight storeys from the ground, while underneath the surface of the earth engines are throbbing with pulsations that exert the force of thousands of horses. ”

“ Here is the heart, the brain, of the vast social organism that has grown up from the germ of the first settlement; here has developed one of the great ganglions of the human world. Hither run all roads, hither set all currents, through all the vast regions round about. ”

“ Immense increase in land values All those advantages adhere to the land; it is on this land and no other that they can be utilized, for here is the centre of population-the focus of exchanges, the market place and workshop of the highest forms of industry. ”

“ When one kills a bullock the others take part of it, returning when they kill, and thus they have fresh meat all the time. Together they hire a schoolmaster, and the children of each are taught for a fractional part of what similar teaching would have cost the first settler. It becomes a comparatively easy matter to send to the nearest town, for some one is always going. But there is less need for such journeys. A blacksmith and a wheelwright scion set up shops, and our settler can have his tools repaired for a small part of the labour they formerly cost him. ”

“ Here are museums and art galleries, and all things rare and valuable, the best of their kind. Here come great actors, and orators, and singers, from all over the world. Here, in short, is a centre of human life, in all its varied manifestations. ”

“ An improvement in the method of cultivation which, with the same outlay, will give two crops a year in place of one, or an improvement in tools and machinery which will double the result of labour on a particular piece of ground, manifestly will have the same effect on the produce as a doubling of the fertility of the land. ”

“ Here, if you have anything to sell, is the market; here, if you have anything to buy, is the largest and the choicest stock. Here intellectual activity is gathered into a focus, and here springs that stimulus which is born of the collision of mind with mind. ”

“ To say nothing of the mental craving which would lead him to welcome the sorriest stranger, he labours under all the material disadvantages of solitude. He can get no temporary assistance for any work that requires a greater union of strength than that afforded by his own family or by such help as he can permanently keep. ”

“ Chapter XII The unbounded savannah While the increase of population increases rent by lowering the margin of cultivation, it is a mistake to look upon this as the only mode by which rent advances as population grows. ”

“ Labour has now an effectiveness which, in the solitary state, it could not approach. If heavy work is to be done, the settlers have a log-rolling, and together accomplish in a day what singly would require years. ”

“ Though he has cattle, he cannot often have fresh meat, for to get a beefsteak he must kill a bullock. He must be his own blacksmith, waggonmaker, carpenter, and cobbler - in short, a "jack of all trades and master of none." He cannot have his children schooled ”

“ Such things as he cannot produce himself, he must buy in quantities and keep on hand, or else go without, for he cannot be constantly leaving his work and making a long journey to the verge of civilization; and when forced to do so, the getting of a vial of medicine or the replacement of a broken auger may cost him the labour of himself and horses for days. ”

“ The benefits of association Another immigrant comes and, guided by the same attraction, settles where there are already two. Another, and another, until around our first comer there are a score of neighbours. ”

“ A store is opened, and he can get what he wants as he wants it; a post-office, soon added, gives him regular communication with the rest of the world. Then come a cobbler, a carpenter, a harness-maker, a doctor ”

“ But to labour expended in the subdivided branches of production that require proximity to other producers and especially to labour expended in that final part of production which consists in distribution, it will yield much larger returns. ”

“ He settles by the side of the first comer, whose condition is at once greatly improved, and to whom many things are now possible that were before impossible, for two men may help each other to do things that one man could never do. ”