productiveness. Labor spent on this land can produce results not only vastly greater than it could on land beyond the boundaries of this population, but results that it could not produce at all beyond those boundaries. As the village grows into the city, the nearness of men to each other, the division of labor that becomes possible, the greater economies that follow in consequence, the immense facilities of exchange, increase the effectiveness of labor exerted in the center of population enormously. Here is the market to buy and sell; here the services of the professional man, the tradesman, of any and everybody, become of much greater value to them than they could possibly be elsewhere. Instead of a few men working over a piece of ground, here are multitudes of men to the acre, on floors one above another, producing vastly more than the same number could over a wider area. All these advantages adhere to the land—to this particular land in the center of industry, and these advantages have to be paid for. By the law of rent, all the produce resulting from this increased effectiveness of labor and ease of exchange—that is, more than what the same labor and capital could procure on land free to them—goes to the landholder. Population, then, as it becomes dense, enormously increases rent.
And the increase of improvements in the arts affects rent in the same way. All labor-saving machines can affect production in one of two ways. Production may remain the same, and a certain amount of labor be set free, or the same amount of labor may be used, and production be increased. In an active civilization like ours, the main effect will be in the latter way. For, by the conditions of industry, labor can not take advantage of its increased effectiveness by resting, but must press for employment, and hence the effect of labor-saving devices will be to increase the wealth produced. But to the production of wealth land is necessary, hence the demand for land must constantly increase, steadily forcing down the margin of cultivation. Thus, without any augmentation of the population, rent is advanced.
In the speculative rise in the value of land, there is a further force acting in the same direction as these others. In every growing community there is a confidence that land will increase in value, which leads to the holding of land for such increase. This speculative rise in the value of land shows itself in higher rents.
In this speculative increase of land-values, Mr. George finds the primary cause of those periodic depressions of industry which we term "hard times." The essential feature of such a period is the circumstance of numbers of men, able and willing to work, seeking employment vainly; great masses of capital lying idle; quantities of goods in warehouses and stores unsalable. It is not that productive power has been too active; it is not that consumption has been too great. The over-production and over-consumption theories have never been satisfactory. Economists have seen that, as the very object of industry is to produce wealth, there can never be too much
