which is
laboriously acquired by the community is represented in the land
value, and finds its way automatically into the landlord's pocket. If
there is a rise in wages, rents are able to move forward, because the
workers can afford to pay a little more. If the opening of a new
railway or a new tramway, or the institution of an improved service of
workmen's trains, or a lowering of fares, or a new invention, or any
other public convenience affords a benefit to the workers in any
particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and therefore
the landlord and the ground landlord, one on top of the other, are
able to charge them more for the privilege of living there.

Some years ago in London there was a toll-bar on a bridge across the
Thames, and all the working people who lived on the south side of the
river, had to pay a daily toll of one penny for going and returning
from their work. The spectacle of these poor people thus mulcted of so
large a proportion of their earnings appealed to the public
conscience: an agitation was set on foot, municipal authorities were
roused, and at the cost of the ratepayers the bridge was freed and the
toll removed. All those people who used the bridge were saved 6d. a
week. Within a very short period from that time the rents on the south
side of the river were found to have advanced by about 6d. a week, or
the amount of the toll which had been remitted. And a friend of mine
was telling me the other day that in the parish of Southwark about
L350 a year, roughly speaking, was given away in doles of bread by
charitable people in connection with one of the churches, and as a
consequence of this the competition for small houses, but more
particularly for single-roomed tenements is, we are told, so great
that rents are considerably higher than in the neighbouring district.

All goes back to the land, and the landowner, who in many cases, in
most cases, is a worthy person utterly unconscious of the character of
the methods by which he is enriched, is enabled with resistless
strength to absorb to himself a share of almost every public and
every private benefit, however important or however pitiful those
benefits may be.

I hope you will understand that when I speak of the land monopolist, I
am dealing more with the process than with the individual landowner. I
have no wish to hold any class up to public disapprobation. I do not
think that the man who makes money by unearned increment