Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/622

?00 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL He does not, however, elaborate his conception This indefinitehess in the conclusion weakens and suggestive essay. occupy, he who will do most to develop the value of the land should obtain the land. But if the occupation of land is to be absolutely trans- ferable, you cannot have that fixity of occupation which in some degree or other is indispensable. In every actual community, moreover, the problem is complicated with questions of ownership. Mr. Courthey touches on the difficulties of unqualified private ownership, and of the practically divided ownership implied in what is popularly known as the three F's system. He sees the impossibility of applying generally any institution like the Irish Land Courts, but contemplates an authority empowered as between owner and occupier to vest the entire interest in the land in the party able and willing to make the most of it. of such an authority. the effect of a lucid Mr. Mann begins with a gentle shock to our nerves. He observes that international migration was hardly taken into account by economists before our time. If international migration became general, it would antiquate the received theory of international trade, for if labour beca?ne perfectly mobile, international values would be deter- mined simply by relative cost of production. Further, the only ground of a strictly economic character which could be alleged in favour of restraint upon international migration would be the diminution in the efficiency of labour consequent upon a lowering of wages. But Mr. Mann calms us with the assurance that even now international migration is not practically important. Immigrants generally form non-competing groups, and immigration is due chiefly to special and temporary causes. In arriving at these conclusions Mr. Mann appears to us to lay too much stress upon the particular instance of the Jewish migration into England. He has himself told us that international migration is a recent phenomenon, and we may reasonably suppose that its consequences are only beginning to be felt. Mr. Llewellyn Smith concerns himself almost entirely with the migration of the country people to London. Following the train of thought suggested in his contribution to Mr. Booth's volume on Labour and Life of the People in East London, he argues that the country people come into London, not aimlessly but with definite prospects of e?nploy- ment; that, as a rule, they do not fall but rise in the social scale; that they displace the really town-bred population, and that it is these ?legenerate townsmen, not the country-bred folk, who recruit the numbers of the unemployed. It is where the influx from the country is least that over-crowding and wretchedness are worst. Mr. Llewellyn Smith appears to make out his case. But if it be true that London uses up human beings in this way, what a prospect for future genera- Of tt?e red,mining p?:q:?ers, s on ?he r i?terest ?cei?$ to ? with a defil:?ition of