speculators who engineer a
corner in corn, or meat, or cotton, or some other vital commodity, and
that the unearned increment in land is reaped by the land monopolist
in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.

It is monopoly which is the keynote; and where monopoly prevails, the
greater the injury to society, the greater the reward of the
monopolist will be. See how this evil process strikes at every form of
industrial activity. The municipality, wishing for broader streets,
better houses, more healthy, decent, scientifically planned towns, is
made to pay, and is made to pay in exact proportion, or to a very
great extent in proportion, as it has exerted itself in the past to
make improvements. The more it has improved the town, the more it has
increased the land value, and the more it will have to pay for any
land it may wish to acquire. The manufacturer purposing to start a
new industry, proposing to erect a great factory offering employment
to thousands of hands, is made to pay such a price for his land that
the purchase-price hangs round the neck of his whole business,
hampering his competitive power in every market, clogging him far more
than any foreign tariff in his export competition; and the land values
strike down through the profits of the manufacturer on to the wages of
the workman. The railway company wishing to build a new line finds
that the price of land which yesterday was only rated at its
agricultural value has risen to a prohibitive figure the moment it was
known that the new line was projected; and either the railway is not
built, or, if it is, is built, only on terms which largely transfer to
the landowner the profits which are due to the shareholders and the
advantages which should have accrued to the travelling public.

It does not matter where you look or what examples you select, you
will see that every form of enterprise, every step in material
progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the
cream off for himself, and everywhere to-day the man, or the public
body, who wishes to put land to its highest use is forced to pay a
preliminary fine in land values to the man who is putting it to an
inferior use, and in some cases to no use at all. All comes back to
the land value, and its owner for the time being is able to levy his
toll upon all other forms of wealth and upon every form of industry. A
portion, in some cases the whole, of every benefit