Land ownership

“ But private ownership of land is a monopoly, say Mr.George and his followers. Land belongs to the whole community; the state, therefore, should be the common landlord; and the first great step in a general act of readjustment is to appropriate the rental value of land by taxation. Improvements, it is magnanimously conceded, are not to be taxed; but land only to the full extent of its rental value. But what is the rental value of agricultural land apart from its improvements? ”

“ Then would the resumption of land as common property in nowise interfere with the proper use and improvement of land.
What is necessary for the use of land is not its private ownership, but the security of improvements. It is not necessary to say to a man, “this land is yours,” in order to induce him to cultivate or improve it. It is only necessary to say to him, “whatever your labor or capital produces on this land shall be yours.” Give a man security that he may reap, and he will sow; assure him of the possession of the house he wants to build, and he will build it. ”

“ In the past the importance of the land problem has been neglected, but now the changed conditions brought about by the war call 1007for increased production at home. This book shows that the present system of land ownership impedes production on every hand and stands in the way of almost every vital reform. ”

“ The Land Owners the same maxims of justice that have been formulated by land owners into law, and are applied every day in English and American courts to disputes between man and man, we shall not only not think of giving the land holders any compensation for the land, but shall take all the improvements and whatever else they may have as well.
But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that any one else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the people resume the ownership of the land. Let the land owners retain their improvements and personal property in secure possession. ”

“ In considering the land situation as it exists, it is true that the ownership of land or, rather, the access to land, is of primary importance. The question arises, Is there enough land in the United States for all citizens who desire to become cultivators? ”

“ Hence, by the laws of that country, land descends to the eldest son, to the exclusion of the other children. The effect of this is to limit the ownership of land to a few persons. Thirty-four persons in that country own six million two hundred and eleven thousand acres of land. ”

“ The United States afford superior advantages for the study of land values fairly independent of restrictive laws or customs. The rapid settlement of wild lands by farmers and the rapid building of cities under free competition give the fairest illustration of tendencies in land values to be found in the world. The fact that the government for the past fifty years has encouraged the settlement of new land at the bare cost of establishing ownership makes the problem almost as simple as if the government had no voice in the distribution. ”

“ The right of all men to participate in the benefits of the soil by the State ownership thereof can be claimed from the fact that land is a natural agent, and that the value of land arises from, and is maintained by, the aggregation of population and the exercise of industry by a people. (Cheers.) The value thus imparted belongs to the people, and not to an individual or a class. That a national land system would be the best for society and good government is self-evident. ”

“ A rough estimate of their number is about two hundred million acres—that is of land suitable for agricultural development. Substantially all this cut-over or logged-off land is in private ownership. The failure of this land to be developed is largely due to inadequate method of approach. Unless a new policy of development is worked out in cooperation between the Federal Government, the States, and the individual owners, a greater part of it will remain unsettled and uncultivated. ”

“ The ambition to improve would be paralyzed, and the desire to keep up the productiveness of the acres to a standard would no longer exist. As soon as one piece of land would be exhausted, the tenant would move to another. Every motive for careful cultivation and preservation would be replaced by motives for immediate profit. These conditions would follow any form of national ownership; but if George's tax of rental value were strictly enforced, there would be no inducement, as I have shown elsewhere in this article, to work the land at all. ”

“ The enormous "unearned increment" that accrues for the fortunate owner of land who toils not neither spins to obtain it, may seem difficult of justification. But after all, land is only one particular case of ownership under the one and the same system. ”

“ But in other cases there is merely a negative argument for property in land: no other better method of employing it has been devised and found practicable The experience with state ownership of mines, forests, and estates has not definitely answered in every case the question whether the social results of state ownership are more favorable than those of private ownership. ”

“ A far more serious impediment is the complicated state of the ownership of land, which renders it frequently impracticable to subdivide a property into such portions as would bring the land within the reach of small bidders. ”

“ Article 44 For the purpose of securing a rational exploitation of the soil and to establish equity in social relationships, the law imposes obligations and constraints on private ownership of land, fixes limitations to the extension thereof according to region and agricultural zone, encourages and imposes land reclamation, the transformation of large estates and the reorganization of productive units, assists small and medium-sized holdings. The law makes provisions in favour of mountainous areas. ”

“ It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up. ”

“ And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation, from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor therefore of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent; for I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds: and it is from this ground rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue. ”

“ Not so with the land. A few years' development may change farm land right of way into city right of way, surrounded by factories, or it may change desirable residential property adjacent to a road into slums. ”

“ Fortunately for the owner, he possesses town property in addition to his landed estates, so that the question with him is not, as it is with many land owners, how to find the necessary capital to cultivate the land, but, having found the capital, how to expend it in farming, so as to produce a proper return. ”

“ In many regions where poor and hilly lands prevail, the town or county could well afford to purchase forest land, expecting thereby to add to the value of the property and to make the forests a source of revenue. ”

“ On the contrary, I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step towards any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another. ”

“ In any country, however new and vast, it would be possible to change "scarcity of labor" into "scarcity of employment" by increasing the price put on the use of land. If three families settled a virgin continent, one family could command the services of the others as laborers for hire just as fully as though they were its chattel slaves, if it was accorded the ownership of the land and could put its own price on its use. Wakefield proposed only that land should be held at what he called "a sufficient price" ”

“ Added to this outlay, large sums have been expended in boring wells, building reservoirs and establishing water stations on cattle and sheep ranges. Buying land from landowners controlling large tracts, obtained by devious means in the early stages of the country's development, is still another heavy national expense. This land, when allotted to small farm settlers, is leased. Leasing the land, instead of granting the freehold, does not augur for a rapid increase in the rural population. ”

“ As no one shall own more than $100,000 worth of property all told, this 160 acres will have to be reduced as we get near to the centres of population. This will still give the owner of such convenient land an advantage over those living further out, who will always be willing to exchange should the first rather follow the coarser grades of farming to dairying or gardening.
Neither is there any reason why the owning of great sections of timber land by one or two men should be necessary to the running of sawmills and supplying the people with lumber. ”

“ It is a tract of land gained from the sea of about ten or twelve hundred acres, banked round in three divisions, and made arable, on which are built about twenty farmhouses, which form almost a new world. This land is the property of the government; a small sum is paid on entering, and a yearly ground-rent, and then it is the property of the purchaser for ever. ”

“ We can thus concentrate upon land as the representative of the free gifts of nature, which are of economic significance. Land in modern communities is for the most part privately owned. It can be bought and sold for a price, and acquired by inheritance. Moreover, it is a common practice, particularly in the United Kingdom, for an owner who does not wish himself to cultivate or otherwise use the land, not to sell it to the man who does, but to lease it to him for a term of years for an annual payment which we term rent. ”

“ The rights and property of the company were taken over by the crown, but recognition was made of the private property right of the planter and of individual claims of those who had invested in the company. Even land rights to planters and adventurers that had not been taken up were recognized, but few proceeded to effect settlement or to exercise the right of taking up 100 acres per share of stock. ”

“ As we view the policy from the year 1903 and from the midst of a populous valley, in which land values have risen from one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre to a hundred or two hundred dollars in most fertile farm tracts, and to thousands in urban centres, we can but regret that these lands themselves had not been held inviolate, and can but wish that only their rentals had been devoted to the high uses to which the nation and State had consecrated these lands. ”

“ Very well, get the land from these landed proprietors, by sale preferred, and let it out to men, not by 1000 acres, as no man can farm well a thousand acres in England; let the farms be greatly reduced, and then the land can be treated as it should be. Most of us have children, and we all know how we love and treat them. Treat the land in the same manner, feed it, and keep it clean, and you will have no cause to complain. The land of old England is as good as it ever was.
"I have serious thoughts of opening a kind of school for people who would like to make $500 a year on an acre. ”

“ A careful inquiry is made into their "profits," but the value of the land itself is not inquired into. The value of the land may have increased three, four, or five times in the course of a century, but the owner of the soil still pays the original rate, and grows rich while he sleeps. ”

“ So that even if an estate were wholly composed of the worst land capable of profitable cultivation, it would not necessarily lie uncultivated because it could pay no rent. Inferior land, however, does not usually occupy, without interruption, many square miles of ground; it is dispersed here and there, with patches of better land intermixed, and the same person who rents the better land, obtains along with it the inferior soils which alternate with it. ”

“ If proprietors find it most profitable to let their lands in large lots, either for agriculture, for cattle, for sheep, or for deer, there is no reason why they should not do so, and there is no doubt that in the end what is most advantageous to the proprietor is so to the tenant, and vice versa, as also to the country at large. If, on the other hand, it be found that letting land in small lots is more profitable than the other practice, few proprietors, we daresay, would hesitate to cut up their land into suitable lots. ”

“ Taking the above unity as a basis, and observing the distinction which must be made between grazing land, or that which is proper for raising stock, and farming land, without the facility of irrigation, this law grants to the contractor or contractors for the establishment of a new settlement, for each hundred families which he may introduce and establish in the state, five sitios of grazing land, and five labors at least, the one-half of which shall be without the facility of irrigation ”

“ These buildings are as distinct a thing from the farm as the stock or the timber on it; and what is paid for them can no more be called rent of land, than a payment for cattle would be, if it were the custom that the landlord should stock the farm for the tenant. The buildings, like the cattle, are not land, but capital, regularly consumed and reproduced ”