Hill will not accommodate all the people who would rather live there than in the Essex marshes. It is easy to say, Let the occupier be the owner; but the question is, Who is to be the occupier? Suppose it were settled by drawing lots, what would prevent the winner from selling his privilege for its full (unearned) value under free exchange and omnipresent competition? To such problems as these, Individualist Anarchism offers no solution. It theorizes throughout on the assumption that one place in a country is as good as another. Under a system of occupying ownership, rent would appear only in its primary form of an excess of the prices of articles over the expenses of producing them, thus enabling owners of superior land to get more for their products than cost price. If, for example, the worst land worth using were only one-third as productive as the best land, then the owner-occupiers of that best land would get in the market the labor cost of their wares three times over. This 200 per cent premium would be just as truly ground rent as if it were paid openly as such to the Duke of Bedford or the Astors. It may be asked why prices must go up to the expenses of production on the very worst land. Why not ascertain and charge the average cost of production taking good and bad land together?[4] Simply because nothing short of the maximum labor cost would repay the owners of the worst land. In fact, the worst land would not be cultivated until the price had risen. The process would be as follows. Suppose the need of the population for wheat were satisfied by crops raised from the best available land only. Free competition in wheat-producing would then bring the price down to the labor cost or expenses of production. Now suppose an increase of population sufficient to overtax the wheat-supplying capacity of the best land. The supply falling short of the demand, the price of wheat would rise. When it had risen to the labor cost of production from land one degree inferior to the best, it would be worth while to cultivate that inferior land. When that new source came to be overtaxed by the still growing population, the price would rise again until it would repay the cost of raising wheat from land yet lower in fertility than the second grade. But these descents would in nowise diminish the fertility of the best land, from which wheat could be raised as cheaply as before, in spite of the rise in the price, which would apply to all the wheat in the market, no matter where raised. That is, the holders of the best land would gain a premium, rising steadily with the increase of population, exactly as the landlord now enjoys a steadily rising rent.[5] As the agricultural industry is in this respect typical of all industries, it will be seen now that the price does not rise because worse land is brought into cultivation, but that worse land is brought into cultivation by the rise of price. Or, to put it