s of landholders to sell to
builders would be diminished. Sellers of land, besides competing with
the public land, would then compete with increased activity with one
another. Finally, just taxation of their land, valueless as a
speculation, would oblige landowners to sell it or to put it to good
use.

Even should the growth of the city be rapid, the value of land in
private hands could in general advance but little, if at all. With the
actual demands of an increased population, the public domain might from
time to time be enlarged; but not, it may reasonably be assumed, at a
rate that would give rise to an upward tendency of prices in the face of
the above-mentioned factors contributing to a downward tendency.

At this point it may be well to remember that, conditions of land
purchase by the city being subject to the Referendum, the buying could
hardly be accompanied by corrupt bargaining.

When the effect of the public land in depressing land values, in other
words in enabling producers to retain the more of their product, was
seen, private as well as public agencies might aid in enlarging the
scope of that effect. The philanthropic might transfer land to the
municipality, preferring to help restore just social conditions rather
than to aid in charities that leave the world with more poor than ever;
the city might provide for a gradual conversion, in the course of time,
of all the land within its limits to public control, first selecting,
with the end in view, tracts of little market value, which, open to
occupiers, would assist in keeping down the value of lands held
privately.

But the more striking results of city public land would lie in another
direction. The spontaneous efforts of each individual to increase and to
secure the product of his labor would turn the current of production
away from the monopolists and toward the producers. With a lot in the
public domain, a wage-worker might soon live in his own cottage. As the
settler often did in the West, to acquire a home he might first build
two or four rooms as the rear, and, living in it, with later savings put
up the front. A house and a vegetable garden, with the increased
consequent thrift rarely in such situation lacking, would add a large
fraction to his year's earnings. Pasture for a cow in suburban city land
would add yet more. Then would this wage-earner, now his own landlord
and in part a direct producer from the soil, withdraw his children from
t