During the earlier stage of your city’s growth, conditions exist which disappear later. Labor is specially favored. The demand for it is as great as the supply, if not greater, and its savings enable it to get a share, by small investments, in the steady advance of land values. Your new city, supposing it to be a metropolis, is invested with all the elements of prosperity. Capital comes to it abundantly from abroad, induced by the opportunities of profitable investment, and labor is equally attracted by high pay. Population increases, together with all the enterprises of industry, and your land, conveniently divided into small lots, changes hands from one purchaser to another, each realizing a satisfactory and handsome profit. The monopolizing influences of land ownership are not generally felt, because of the large and unoccupied area of surface, and the facility to all in the acquirement of titles. Labor enjoys an era of remarkable prosperity outside as well as within the limits of your city. Your government has donated to it millions of acres of fertile agricultural lands, whose surface, for the most part, requires no great outlay of capital to fit it for the uses of husbandry; and altogether, the general contentment and thrift indicate that all material interests are equally equipped and uniformly successful in the struggle of life. Labor goes cheerfully to its daily toil, and returns to its abundant board with a hope and ambition it has seldom known before. All human purposes appear in a flourishing state, except, it may incidentally be observed, that your religion at this period droops, without its usual attention and support. You are now, we shall suppose, at the end of the second decade in the history of your city, and many changes are observable, due to the progress of your society and civilization. Your metropolis may contain now about one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. The market value of its land surface, about three miles square, has increased, from the government price at which it was purchased by the single or half dozen purchasers, from about seven thousand to three hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and the whole value of the products of industry upon it may be reasonably estimated at a like sum. With the privileges and partnership which labor has enjoyed in this great increase of values, it is so far quiet and satisfied; but unfortunately the inevitable outcome is not so promising to it. The evil effects of your private ownership become more and more apparent as your city advances, and when, under the promptings of human greed and selfishness, your landlords have fairly commenced their raid upon the industries of the city. They now exact from you a tax in the form of land rent alone which consumes yearly the twentieth part of all the products of industry upon their possessions. This enormous tax is exacted without the return of any service whatever except the privilege of a dwelling place.