Land as Property

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 297, 1 December 1928, Page 9

Land as Property

The Problem of

(By

“Lector" )

“To accept value for land In one generation because It Is property, and then confiscate It In another because It Is not, Is simply subversive not only of property in land, but of the whole of the principles on which individualism Is founded. The right to property In land Is traceable to exactly the same action, motives and principles as the right to property In everything else.” —C. Y. C. Dawbarn.

fpHESE ARE DAYS when more emphasis is being put upon rights than upon duties; and in nothing is that fact more clearly evident than in the view of certain people concerning land. By some freak of the mind, the ownership of land is regarded as a thing entirely distinct from any other kind of ownership, In a vague but real way, the sight of thousands of acres of agricultural or pastoral land bordered by the far-flung fences of the owner, gives rise in some minds to a dull feeling of resentment. Land somehow seems different, and the question is asked, “What right has one individual to claim absolute possession of all that fruitful tract of country?” PARTY SLOGANS.

When the mind of the observer has been trained along certain propagandist lines, he will not stop at merely asking the question, but will go On to assert that the land as God made it belonged to the people; that at some time or other someone here and there wrongfully appropriated it, and that it ought to be given back without further ado to its rightful owners. Those aie the people Bentham had in mind when he wrote in his “Principles of Legislation”: “There is no reasoning with fanatics armed with natural rights, which each one understands as he pleases and applies as he sees fit; of which nothing can be yielded or retrenched; which are inflexible at the same time that they are unintelligible; which are consecrated as dogmas from which it is a crime to vary.”

DANCERS OF NATIONALISATION.

UNEARNED INCREMENT.

It Is, however, entirely and utterly useless to Intone the tiresome party slogans about nationalisation, confiscation and all the other “—atlons” that go to make up the stock-in-trade of those who want something for nothing, In the face of the downright and flagrant Injustices that would accrue from the adoption of such policies to the owners of a kind of property that differs from other kinds of property In no way at all.

“Land is exactly no worse and no better than every other form of property,” says the eminent economist quoted at the head of this article; and it is true.

LAND VALUES

Without shirking the issue, it may be frankly admitted that in some cases originally land was obtained for more or less of an old song. But what the land-struck agitator of to-day either cannot or will not see, is that at the time, in the vast majority of cases, an old song just about represented the value of the land. Its present day value is, with very few exceptions, due to the industry and enterprise that have subsequently been directed to its development.

It Is most questionable If the same covetousness would be evidenced on the part of the land-hungry theorists, were they to be offered a stretch apiece of the wilderness of bush and scrub with which the pioneers of a new country such as this had to contend and which they had by the sweat of their brows and the expenditure of capital to bring Into shape.

QUESTIONS OF CAIN AND LOSS.

Money, to begin with, had to be laid out on land. Anyone knows that you must put money into land before you can get any out. A policy of nationalisation or any other of the far-fetched notions with which we are so familiar to-day could therefore not be carried out with any fairness except on the basis of a just return tor capital and labour expended.

A FEW QUERIES.

A famous economist went even further and said: “If the nationalisation of the land without compensation is flagrantly unjust, it can be shown that nationalisation with compensation, though not so unjust, would prove incalculably mischievous.” The relevant questions, as Fawcett points out, are these: If the State became the posses-

Ownership

sor of all the land, what is going to be done with it? What principles are to regulate the rents to be charged ? Who is to decide the particular plots of land that should be allotted to those who apply for them ? If the rent charged is to be determined by the competition of the open market, in what respect would a cultivator be better off if he paid a competition rent to the State instead of to a private individual? And if the market price is not to be charged who is to bear the loss? From what fund is the deficiency to be made good ? If land were to be allotted as a matter of patronage, who would have the fertile plots and who would be relegated to those barren soils which, under the most favourable conditions, will scarcely pay for cultivation?”

In addition to that catechism—which will take a power of answering—lt may be pointed out that If the Government assumed possession of the land and proceeded to let It out on terms different from those regulating the ordinary transactions of business lite, the way would be opened up at once for all kinds of corruption, favouritism, wire-pulling and the rest of It, which would speedily cost any country loss of standing and reputation which are of more value than the pecuniary loss that would at the same time inevitably accrue.

One misconception at the basis of much of the land agitation is that the landowner is unique in his possession of benefits arising from increment which he has not earned. Values increase apart from any effort of his own. He is therefore regarded as a parasite on the body politic, and it is said ot him—as it used to be said of the House of Lords—that he is “useless, dangexous, and ought to be abolished.”

But here again It may be Insisted upon and reiterated that land Is In no water-tight category of Its own as property, but shares the qualities common to all sorts of possessions In this very regard. Why attack only unearned increment from land?

Said Sir Chiozza Money, giving chapter and verse for the case he was quoting, and rebutting the fallacy above referred to, “Company B is a restaurant company, and the balance-sheet is for 1903. The issued capital is £ 189,000, but a great deal of this is ‘water,’ for bonus shares have been issued year after year. In the year under review the profits amount to £76,000, or over 40 per cent, of the watered capital. The wages bill- probably does not amount to £30,000 per annum, or onehalf the amount of the year’s profits. .... After paying the ground landlord’s unearned inclement, the sleeping partners in this concern gain as they sleep a hundredfold more unearned increment than the ground landlords.”

One more point. Were the State to appropriate unearned increment, what would be its duty in the case of land that became depreciated in value through no fault of the owner ?

If the State Is to have all the gain and none of the risks of loss—which every private owner must take—lt means that land as a property will have a burden attached to it that belongs to no other.

As Fawcett said again, “If we purchase a house, a manufactory or a ship, we take the purchase with its risk of loss and chances of gain; and why, with regard to land alone, should a purchaser have all the risks of loss and none of the chances of gain ?”

The need for tc-day Is to attract more and more capital to the development of land, and to further that desirable end, let the citizens say to the State bureaucracy: “Hands off!”