Now the public appropriation of all future increments of land value would evidently be beneficial to the community as a whole. It would enable all the people to profit by gains that now go to a minority, and it would enable the landless majority to acquire land more easily and more cheaply. We have in mind, of course, only those value increases that are not due to improvements in or on the land, and we assume that these could be distinguished in practice from the increments of value that represent improvements. Would the measure in question inflict undue hardship upon individuals? Here we must make a distinction between those persons who own land at the time that, and those who buy land after, the law is enacted. The only inconvenience falling upon the latter class would be deprivation of the power to obtain future increases in value. The law would not cause the value of the land to decline below their purchase price. Other forces might, indeed, bring about such a result; but, as a rule, such depreciation would be relatively insignificant, for the simple reason that it would already have been "discounted" in the reduction of value which followed the law at the outset. The very knowledge that they could not hope to profit by future increases in the value of the land would impel purchasers to lower their price accordingly. While taking away the possibility of gaining, the law enables the buyers to take the ordinary precautions against losing. Therefore, it does not, as sometimes objected, lessen the so called "gambler's chances." On the other hand, the tax does not deprive the owners of any value that they may add to the land through the expenditure of labour or money, nor in any way discourage productive effort. Now it is, as a rule, better for individuals as well as for society that men's incomes should represent labour, expenditure, and saving instead of being the result of "windfalls," or other fortuitous and conjunctural circumstances. And the power to take future value increments is not an intrinsically essential element of private property in land. Like every other condition of ownership, its morality is determined by its effects upon human welfare. But we have seen in the last paragraph that human welfare in the sense of the social good is better promoted by a system of landownership which does not include this element; and we have just shown that such a system causes no undue hardship to the individual who buys land after its establishment. Such is the answer to the contention, noticed a few pages back, that the landowner has a right to future increments of value because they are a kind of fruit of his property. It is more reasonable that he should not enjoy this particular and peculiar "fruit." Were the increment tax introduced into a new community before any one had purchased land, it would clearly be a fair and valid limitation on the right of ownership. Those who should become owners