Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
Population still continues to increase, and as it increases so do the
economies which its increase permits, and which in effect add to the
productiveness of the land. Our first settler’s land, being the center
of population, the store, the blacksmith’s forge, the wheelwright’s
shop, are set up on it, or on its margin, where soon arises a village,
which rapidly grows into a town, the center of exchanges for the people
of the whole district. With no greater agricultural productiveness
than it had at first, this land now begins to develop a productiveness
of a higher kind. To labor expended in raising corn, or wheat, or
potatoes, it will yield no more of those things than at first; but to
labor expended in the subdivided branches of production which require
proximity to other producers, and, especially, to labor expended in
that final part of production, which consists in distribution, it will
yield much larger returns. The wheat-grower may go further on, and
find land on which his labor will produce as much wheat, and nearly as
much wealth; but the artisan, the manufacturer, the storekeeper, the
professional man, find that their labor expended here, at the center
of exchanges, will yield them much more than if expended even at a
little distance away from it; and this excess of productiveness for
such purposes the landowner can claim just as he could an excess in its
wheat-producing power. And so our settler is able to sell in building
lots a few of his acres for prices which it would not bring for
wheat-growing if its fertility had been multiplied many times. With the
proceeds, he builds himself a fine house, and furnishes it handsomely.
That is to say, to reduce the transaction to its lowest terms, the
people who wish to use the land build and furnish the house for him,
on condition that he will let them avail themselves of the superior
productiveness which the increase of population has given the land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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