Socialism As It Is | Page 6

this scale is likely to be still further raised and to be made more steep as the tax becomes more and more popular.
Mr. Churchill's defense of the new policy of the British government is as significant as the new laws it has enacted:--
"You may say that unearned increment of the land," he says, "is on all-fours with the profit gathered by one of those American 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....
"Every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself, and every where 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.... 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 the 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." (Italics mine.)[15]
But we cannot believe that the government of Great Britain, which draws so much of its support from the wealthy free trade merchants and manufacturers has been persuaded to adopt this new principle so much by the argument that a land rent weighs on the working classes, though it is true that the manufacturer may have to pay for this in higher money wages, as it has by that other argument of Mr. Churchill's that it weighs directly on business.
"The manufacturer proposing to start a new industry," he says, "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 around the neck of his whole business, hampering his competitive power in every market, clogging 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, it is built only on terms which largely transfer to the landowner the profits which are due to shareholders and the privileges which should have accrued to the traveling public." (My italics.)[16]
No doubt Mr. Churchill's failure to mention shippers was inadvertent.
It was a practical application of these business principles and chiefly in the interest of the employers, manufacturers, investors, and shippers, that the State decided, as a first step, to take 20 per cent of all the increase in land values from the present date and to levy an annual tax of one fifth of one per cent on all land held for speculation, i.e. used neither for agricultural nor for industrial nor building purposes.
The collectivist policy, that governments should undertake to reorganize industry and to develop the industrial efficiency of the population, is a relatively new one, however, and where non-Socialist Liberals and Radicals are adopting it, they do so as a rule with apologies. For while such reforms can be considered as investments which in the long run repay not only the community as a whole, but also the business interests, they involve a considerable initial cost, even beyond what can be raised by the gradual expropriation of city land rents, and the question at once arises as to who is to pay the rest of the bill. The supporter of the new reforms answers that the business interests should do so, since the development of industry, which is the object of this expenditure, is more profitable to them than to other classes. While Mr. Churchill declares that Liberalism attacks landlordism and monopoly only, and not capital itself, as Socialism does, he is at great pains to show that the cost