Rent roll

“ Relation of rent to wages and interest Stated reversely, the law of rent is necessarily the law of wages and interest taken together, for it is the assertion that, no matter what be the production that results from the application of labour and capital, these two factors will only receive in wages and interest such part of the produce as they could have produced on land free to them without the payment of rent - that is, the least productive land in use. ”

“ If wages fall, profits, and not rent, would rise. If wages rose, profits, and not rent, would fall. The rise of rent and wages, and the fall of profits, are generally the inevitable effects of the same cause—the increasing demand for food, the increased quantity of labour required to produce it, and its consequently high price. If the landlord were to forego his whole rent, the labourers would not be in the least benefited. ”

“ On the whole, the actual landlord is by no means the monster he is popularly represented to be. He will wait rather than change a good tenant. He will make no fuss if the back rent is paid ever so slowly. To many respectable folk, keeping the home together on perhaps 22s. a week, this is an inestimable boon. It is wonderful how, among these steady people, rent is made a first charge on income, though naturally, given enough pressure, rent must wait while such income as there is goes to buy food. ”

“ In technical discussion the term rent is usually confined to the compensation secured from appropriation of space, peculiar location, natural fertility, mineral deposits, water privileges, or any natural advantage to be used in production. In this limited meaning rent is confined to the advantage gained by the owner of wealth in any form so affected by the law of supply and demand as to gain a scarcity value. ”

“ We are not now so much concerned with the practical conclusions which they deduce respecting the real incidence of taxation, as with the fact that the distinction involves a point of fundamental importance in the theory of rent. Rent, broadly defined as a payment for differential advantages, is measured upwards from a minimum level where, it is assumed, no rent is paid. The producers on the 'margin' of production clear their expenses, but have no surplus in hand to transfer to the landlords. ”

“ A farmer, in making his present contract for rent, does not concern himself with the past history of the causes of the fertility or situation of the land, but with its present advantages, and he makes no attempt to draw the distinction between the earned and the unearned. And, in the future, he and his landlord may allow the nominal rent to remain unaltered in spite of increased prosperity or intensified depression in agriculture, in consideration simply of lessened expenditure or added liberality in the matter of improvements. ”

“ But if changes are ever to be contemplated, a simple quantitative measure is the only safeguard against utter chaos. Thus rent, like interest, will be found indispensable as a measure under any efficient system of society, even if it might not always represent the payment of sums of money to private individuals. And that is why the principles governing rent possess, as I indicated at the outset of this chapter, an importance more fundamental than our present system of ownership and tenure. ”

“ But in the economic meaning of rent, payments for the use of any of the products of human exertion are excluded, and of the lumped payments for the use of houses, farms, etc., only that part is rent which constitutes the consideration for the use of the land. The part that is paid for the use of buildings or other improvements is properly interest, as it is a consideration for the use of capital. ”

“ It is assumed that, if wages or profits fell below the points, which, on a comparison of the advantages and drawbacks, pecuniary and other, of farming and other occupations, are considered to be normal in the farming industry, some labourers and farmers would seek some more advantageous employment, and that, if they rose above, some fresh competitors would enter the ranks of agriculture. It is assumed that landlord and tenant are actuated by competitive considerations alone, the one trying to obtain the highest and the other the lowest rent. ”

“ The condition of the labourer would not be a whit improved. If landlords were prohibited from asking an increase of rent from their tenants and from ejecting a tenant so long as the fixed rent was paid, the body of the producers would gain nothing. Economic rent would still increase, and would still steadily lessen the proportion of the produce going to labour and capital. ”

“ Higher rents may conceivably be offered than would arise from a single regard to the productive powers of the land and the income accruing from the sale of its produce. The second occupation may be of primary importance; and, even if it is subsidiary, as in the case of the crofters, a sudden failure or unexpected disaster in their fishing ventures may render them not merely unwilling, but unable, to pay a rent, which was fixed with the prospect of securing some part of their income from this subsidiary source. ”

“ The landlords will therefore be compensated in value and price for what they lose in quantity; and will suffer only so far as they consume their rent in kind, or after receiving it in money, expend it in agricultural produce: that is, they only suffer as consumers of agricultural produce, and in common with all the other consumers. Considered as landlords, they have the same income as before; the tithe, therefore, falls on the consumer, and not on the landlord. ”

“ Allowing, as I most fully do, that no pressure can destroy rents, yet as the last portions of capital employed on the land pay no rent, it is to me inconceivable that there would be no inducement to employ more labourers whilst their average production should be three times more food than they could themselves consume. ”

“ And thus to say that rent will be the excess in productiveness over the yield at the margin or lowest point of cultivation is the same thing as to say that it will be the excess of produce over what the same amount of labour and capital obtains in the least remunerative occupation. ”

“ In the case of the working classes the rent absorbs, at the lowest possible estimate, about one third of their total earnings, for it must be remembered that the rent is an expense that goes on all the time, whether they are employed or not. If they get into arrears when out of work, they have to pay double when they get employment again. ”

“ Now, while it is unquestionably true that the increasing pressure of population which compels a resort to inferior points of production will raise rents, and does raise rents, I do not think that all the deductions commonly made from this principle are valid, nor yet that it fully accounts for the increase of rent as material progress goes on. ”

“ Further speculative advance of rent would cease, and in the future the people at large would gain the difference between the increase of rent and the amount at which that increase was estimated in fixing the present value of land, in which, of course, prospective as well as present value is an element. But it would leave, for all the future, one class in possession of the enormous advantage that they now have over others. ”

“ Over and above the capital of the farmer and all its profits, they regularly occasion the reproduction of the rent of the landlord. This rent may be considered as the produce of those powers of nature, the use of which the landlord lends to the farmer. It is greater or smaller according to the supposed extent of those powers, or in other words, according to the supposed natural or improved fertility of the land. It is the work of nature which remains, after deducting or compensating every thing which can be regarded as the work of man. ”

“ But when they continue so long as they have done in this country, it is impossible for the landlord to do otherwise than proportion his rent accordingly, and take the chance of being obliged to lessen it again, on the return of the currency to its natural state. ”

“ It requires rent to be low, for without that there cannot be a great surplus produce to divide between the two other classes, after satisfying the landlord. You will always make me say that profits depend on the [Pg 205] low price of corn. I never do say so; I contend that they depend on wages, and, although in my opinion wages will be mainly regulated by the facility of obtaining necessaries, they do not entirely depend on such facility. ”

“ In common speech we speak of rent only when owner and user are distinct persons. But in the economic sense there is also rent where the same person is both owner and user. Where owner and user are thus the same person, whatever part of his income he might obtain by letting the land to another is rent, while the return for his labour and capital is that part of his income which they would yield him did he hire the land instead of working it. ”

“ The rent of the landlord is a value which, in ordinary cases, it is continually producing over and above replacing, in the most complete manner, the whole consumption, the whole expense laid out upon the employment and maintenance both of the workmen and of their employer.
Artificers, manufacturers, and merchants, can augment the revenue and wealth of their society by parsimony only; or, as it is expressed in this system, by privation, that is, by depriving themselves of a part of the funds destined for their own subsistence. They annually reproduce nothing but those funds. ”

“ For, begotten of the continuous advance of rents, arises a speculative tendency which discounts the effect of future improvements by a still further advance of rent, and thus tends, where this has not occurred from the normal advance of rent, to drive wages down to the slave point—the point at which the laborer can just live. ”

“ The sordid subject came up again for discussion when Phyllis and I went to have a preliminary chat with the house-agent.
"You have spoken with eloquence and conviction about reception-rooms, out-houses, railway stations, golf courses, and h. and c.," said I, "but sooner or later some one must rise and say a few pointed words about Rent."
"That all depends on what you are prepared to give," he replied. "The rough-and-ready rule is to fix one's rent at a tenth of one's income."
"Yes, but which income?" I asked. "For I have two incomes and I can't afford a separate house for each." ”

“ The rents which they promise, they are almost invariably incapable of paying; and consequently they become indebted to those under whom they hold, almost as soon as they take possession. They give up, in the shape of rent, the whole produce of the land with the exception of a sufficiency of potatoes for a subsistence; but as this is rarely equal to the promised rent, they constantly have against them an increasing balance. ”

“ Rent, in short, merely equalizes the profits of different farming capitals, by enabling the landlord to appropriate all extra gains occasioned by superiority of natural advantages. If all landlords were unanimously to forego their rent, they would but transfer it to the farmers, without benefiting the consumer; for the existing price of corn would still be an indispensable condition of the production of part of the existing supply, and if a part obtained that price the whole would obtain it. ”

“ Nothing, he declares, is more out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never raise their rents. [53] High rents produce industry. The man who doubles his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. Even in Ireland, [54] a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement, though the rent should not be excessive, and the system of middlemen is altogether detestable. One odd suggestion is characteristic. ”

“ A century ago, as I know very well, house-rent, even in London, took a small part of the workman's scanty earnings; now his earnings are sometimes very little better than they were a century ago, and his rent absorbs from a fourth to a half of what he earns in poorly paid labour. ”

“ To the latter the rise is but a compensation for the tithe he pays; to the first, who pays none, it is clear gain, and therefore enables him, and if there be freedom of competition, forces him, to pay so much more rent to his landlord. ”

“ Their returns are certain for, mark you, every tradesman pays his rent every Monday morning, there is no delay. If it be not paid the hour it is due, the landlord is empowered by law to send a bailiff to the house, to keep him there at an expense to the tenant of three shillings per day—and to request him, at the end of five days, to sell off the goods and chattels provided the demand is still unsatisfied. I know no better investment for capital, be it large or small, than that of which I speak. There are no taxes, no ground-rents, and the tenant is bound to keep his premises in repair. ”

“ This, in the case of the average wage earner in this country, is not less than one-third, that is, he who earns one dollar and a half will receive as wages one dollar, the other half dollar is retained by the employer as due for the capital invested. Then having no home he must pay tribute to property in shelter for himself and family. The rent will be higher in proportion to the poverty of the apartments. The poorest tenement returns the highest rate of interest to the landlord. ”

“ But the first farthing they take more than their hundred, be it sooner or later, is usury.
Again, when we build a house, and let it, we have a right to as much rent as will return us the wages of our labour, and the sum of our outlay. If, as in ordinary cases, not labouring with our hands or head, [248] we have simply paid—say £1000—to get the house built, we have a right to the £1000 back again at once, if we sell it; or, if we let it, to £500 rent during two years, or £100 rent during ten years, or £10 rent during a hundred years. ”