LAND TAX.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3144, 20 November 1922, Page 7

LAND TAX.

Whatever stimulates the use of laud calls for more labor. The structure of the industrial system rests upon land. No industry is independent of its service. Labor cannot exert itself apart, from the land, even in manufactures. 'Throughout all branches of its effort it must have land to work upon. The higher the price it has to pay for the use of land, the greater the impediment to its productive energy. Cheap laud is beneficial to production. The dearer the land the heavier the toll, upon industry. Now. land is cheap where itis abundant. Anything which increases its abundance lowers its price, or value, or rent. A substantial land tax renders it unprofitable to hold land out of use. for speculative purposes. Since a land tax cannot be shifted from the sholders of the landowner he cannot afford to retain his land except by making it productive. More speculators become eager to sell their land. This operates m the same way upon price as an increase in the supply of land. More land is available for those who want it for use and occupation. A landowner cannot continue long to pay a heavy land tax unless his land is yielding him a revenue; it cannot yield him a revenue unless it is put to some productive or useful purpose; consequently tin- landowner must use his land or sell it to someone who will. In other words, all the land idle, vacant, and disused before the tax will, by the powerful incentive operating on the minds of its owners, be brought under cultivation or under occupation. Necessarily incident to Ibis process i« a keener demand for labor. To bring land ito use held' by speculators is, perforce, to stimulate this demand. Furthermore, it has the inline effect in cheapening land as an increase in its supply —which, indeed, it is—and cheap land always leads to greater industrial activity. Thus industry is quickened and the employment of labor increased.

The inventor of pate de foie gras. Jean Close, was to have a statue unveiled to him at .Strasbourg. Ids native city, last month. Since I 7(j."> such a statue has been repeatedly agitated for. The famous chef first manufactured the delicacy in the city, which still distributes many hundredweights throughout the world.