From the ground rents alone of every municipality, free and abundant water, light and heat are supplied to every inhabitant; and from the same source of income a complete insurance is furnished against individual loss from accidents, and all our dead are disposed of without cost to relatives and friends. We place no dead bodies in the earth as you do, considering such a practice not only barbarous, but dangerous to the health of the living. On the contrary, we extinguish them in a manner which you cannot follow from a lack of the required advance in chemical science. Ever since our discovery of the elementary unit we have had the power to reduce all matter into its original state, and it serves us well, that with our chemical appliances and due solemnity not a vestige of the dead is left to be preserved, except their memories. For the purpose of exhibiting to you the marked difference of effect on labor and industry between private and government ownership of land, let us trace the institution and progress of one of your cities in comparison with one of ours. These combinations of individual enterprise are to be found upon your planet in all stages of growth, and may be most conveniently observed by you in this vicinity in their earlier periods of development. They are instituted mostly with you in a fortuitous way, a few individual interests forming the nucleus around which capital and labor are attracted, under the outlook of increased population and trade, to supply and create the various products of industry demanded. The whole land surface of your new city, including its prospective limits, is immediately appropriated at a trifling cost, by a single one or a smaller number of owners, under laws conveniently designed for their purposes. From this time forward the most extraordinary exactions from industry begin. Every stroke of the hammer and revolution of the fly wheel adds to the value of these possessions, until in a short time there is no limit to the price or rent of them, but the ability of industry to stand the tax.