Unfortunately the amount of municipal land available for such an arrangement in our American cities is negligible. If they are to establish the system they must first purchase the land from private owners. Undoubtedly this ought to be done by all large cities in which the housing problem has become acute, and the value of land is constantly rising. This policy has been adopted with happy results by many of the municipalities of France and Germany.[88] At the state election of 1915 the voters of Massachusetts adopted by an overwhelming majority a constitutional amendment authorising the cities of the commonwealth to acquire land for prospective home builders. In Savannah, Georgia, no extension of the municipal limits is made until the land to be embraced has passed into the ownership of the city. Another method is to refrain from opening a new street in a suburban district until the city has become the proprietor of the abutting land. Whatever be the particular means adopted, the objects of municipal purchase and ownership of land are definite and obvious: to check the congestion of population in the great urban centres, to provide homes for the homeless, and to secure for the whole community the socially occasioned increases in land values. Indeed, it is probable that no comprehensive scheme of housing reform can be realised without a considerable amount of land purchase by the municipalities. Cities must be in a position to provide sites for those home builders who cannot obtain land on fair conditions from private proprietors.[89] Turning now from the direct method of public ownership to the indirect method of reform through taxation, we reject the thoroughgoing proposals of the Single Taxers. To appropriate all economic rent for the public treasury would be to transfer all the value of land without compensation from the private owner to the State. For example: a piece of land that brought to the owner an annual revenue of one hundred dollars would be taxed exactly that amount; if the prevailing rate of interest were five per cent. the proprietor would be deprived of wealth to the amount of two thousand dollars; for the value of all productive goods is determined by the revenue that they yield, and benefits the person who receives the revenue. Thus the State would become the beneficiary and the virtual owner of the land. Inasmuch as we do not admit that the so-called social creation of land values gives the State a moral right to these values, we must regard the complete appropriation of economic rent through taxation as an act of pure and simple confiscation.[90] _Appropriating Future Increases of Land Value_