favored the ownership of land by the majority of the people. The laws of Moses made each farm the perpetual endowment of the family to which it was assigned. It could not be sold

away from the family; and if pledged for debt, it returned to the family at the year of Jubilee.

7. For this reason small farms are better than large, as the subdivision of the land increases the number of landowners. Of course in the early settlement of any country the farms will be large at first. With the growth of population they should be growing constantly smaller, and at the same time the product of each small farm should be greater than was that of the larger. In eastern America many farmers are "land-poor" because they will not learn this. They have not the capital to till a hundred or two hundred acres, on which they have to pay higher taxes with every decade. If they were to sell off half, and spend the money on the rest, they would become prosperous.

8. The finest farming in the world is seen in the northern provinces of Belgium. Many farms are as small as seven or eight acres. The land is not naturally rich, but the labor of the people has made a garden of it. They spend twice as much on an acre as is done in England, and keep more cattle. They feed 1800 people to a square mile, and save money. Much of their success is due to the fact that they formerly were a manufacturing people, but their manufactures came to an end when the steam-engine superseded hand-labor. They had no coal-beds, and to transport coal in those days was costly. So they applied to farming the careful and business-like methods of the workshop. They economized their time well, wasted no material, left no corners in possession of weeds, and studied which were the best crops, the best implements, the best breeds of cattle. They watched the markets, especially of all the great cities within reach, to see what there was a demand

for. America and even England might take lessons from them.

9. The value of land, like that of anything else, is the measure of nature's resistance that we have overcome in getting what we need of her. It is thus the result of labor expended either on the piece of land itself, or upon land in its neighborhood. Apart from labor, land is merely soil, and has no value. Through labor it becomes farms and houselots, and acquires value. There is no value in mere soil, however fertile, unless it has acquired value either through cultivation or through its situation. Nobody would give a dollar for a square mile of the Amazon valley, which is the most fertile soil in the world. No doubt it will yet become the most valuable through conquest of nature's forces by labor. At present an acre of New Hampshire, with the granite cropping out, is worth far more.

10. As value is the result of labor, those who buy or rent land are paying for the results of labor. They are not paying for what the soil was before labor was expended, but for the farm which human labor has produced from that raw material. A farm is like a ship. Nature gives us the materials out of which to make it, but it is labor which gives these their value in adapting them to human use. Now ships are constantly falling in value, because of the improvements in the ways of making them. No ship that was built twenty years ago would bring near what it cost, even after all allowance for wear has been made. So it is with farms, although here the changes are not so rapid. The improvement in machinery and in methods brings down the price of all that has been done in making them; and their owners cannot sell them for what they cost, but for what it would cost to replace them.

II. For the same reason, those who rent farms from their owners are able to obtain the use of them in return for the

payment of a smaller share of the crop than formerly. It is often true, indeed, that the amount of produce (or its equivalent in money) is larger than was paid formerly. But in most cases it will be found that the share of the harvest which the landlord takes in rent is diminished. The only exception is where a change in situation has taken place, through the rise of a better market for farm-produce close by the farm; and even then the tenant is paying more only because there is a much larger value on which to pay. He is paying for value added to the land by labor on adjacent land.

12. That part of the value of a piece of land which is due to labor expended on itself is called the earned increment. It is represented by the clearing away of timber, fencing, unexhausted manures, drainage, crops, meadow-sward, lawn, houses, out-houses, and whatever else would not be on the land except through the labor of man and the toil of beasts. To this might fairly be added what the owner or tenant has done to make roads, build school-houses and churches, or to contribute to any object of general benefit in his neighborhood. All these add to the value of the land, and have been done by him as the holder of this particular piece of it.

13. The part of the value of a piece of land which is due to labor expended on land in its vicinity, we call the unearned increment. This of course is greatest where the population is most dense. Thus the owners of land in or near a great city may become rich simply by holding on until their property rises in price through the demand for building-lots. Away from the cities this kind of increase in value is not so striking. Yet whenever a railroad establishes a station at any point, the land near it rises at once and decidedly in value. So, in a less degree, does all the other land within reasonable reach of such a station. Most of the land which

has been taken up in homesteads in the West would have had no value if the railroad had not preceded the settlers, and had not given them lower rates for carrying their produce than are given to Eastern farmers. Even on these terms, such lands are far from cheap, although the settler pays for 160 acres merely the costs of survey, ranging from $37 to $46. The labor of breaking new soil, and the costliness of creating all social conveniences, are a high price in themselves.

NOTE. The proposal to take in taxation all the unearned increment, on the principle that it is the creation of society and therefore belongs to society, will be discussed in the chapter on Taxation.

14. The comfort and success of the farmer, therefore, depend not only on what he does with his own land, but on what is done on the land in his neighborhood. The railroad may extend his neighborhood somewhat by carrying his wheat or corn or pork a thousand miles, at the rate it would charge for a hundred miles in the East. But under such conditions he can raise only the few crops which will bear a long transportation, and is thus debarred from having a proper rotation of crops. And it will not give him rates equally low on what he purchases at a distance, or what he gets in exchange for his crops. He thus suffers in both his farming and his profits by his distance from the market.

Formerly this mattered much less, as every farm was almost a self-supporting community. The shoes and clothing, the soap and candles, and many other conveniences were then made in the farm-house. It was not necessary to sell much, as very little was bought. The changes in our habits and tastes, and the great cheapening of what is produced by the factory system, has put an end to this. The farmer must find a market for about forty per cent

of his crop in order to purchase the real or supposed necessaries of his existence. The "age of homespun is departed, or lingers only in out-of-the-way corners of the country.

15. It is of great importance to the farmer, therefore, to have those who supply him with what he must buy, at work in his own neighborhood. If his farm is near by a large and busy population, which is not producing food, he has a steady market for a large variety of farm, garden, orchard and dairy produce. He can vary his crops from year to year, so as to avoid the rapid exhaustion of his land. He can keep many cows and horses, to the enrichment of his manure-heap, and can supplement it with all kinds of town refuse. He can distribute the risks of farming by growing a great variety, so that the weather which hurts one may suit another. While he who farms at a distance from his market can hardly help injuring the quality of his land, he who farms in the neighborhood of his market has constant and plentiful opportunity to improve it.

16. A whole community in which there is no employment but farming is in constant risk of famine. It sounds odd that people are in danger of starvation when they give all their energies to producing food; but experience proves this true. All the foreign countries which have had great famines in recent times, have been merely agricultural countries. Ireland, India, China, Persia, Asia Minor, Russia, northern Sweden are instances. At home we have had local famines in parts of Virginia and of West Virginia, and in Nebraska, for the very same reason. When a community 'puts all its eggs into one basket," if the basket fall they are ruined. In India if the rains fail to come in the rainy season, it means death to myriads, perhaps to millions. When India was a manufacturing country, the greatest manufacturing country in the world indeed, she had no

ee