Excerpt from Land Nationalization

Ownership involves two distinct rights - By way of further clearing the ground, it is well at once to emphasize an important distinction connected with the right of owner ship, which will have to be more fully considered later on. Behind all the varied forms of ownership there lie two rights - the right to derive a revenue from the land, and the right to determine the use to which the land shall be put. It is mainly on the extent to which these two independent rights are retained in the same hand that the differences in the forms of ownership depend. The farmer Occupying his own freehold enjoys in his own person both rights. The equitable owner of a fully mortgaged estate parts with the revenue of the land, but retains the right of direc tion. The ground landlord of an estate let on building leases gives up the right of direction but retains the revenue. An intermediate type of landlord, in practice very numerous, retains, 'in addition to the revenue, a partial control over his land by letting it for short terms.

Three schools of Land Nationalizers. - These varying types of landownership are under present conditions mere matters of convenience determined by private bargaining. But as soon as it is proposed to substitute national for in dividual ownership, the determination of the character of the ownership to be created becomes a question of fundamental importance. Is the State to claim the revenue Of the land alone, or the direction alone, or is it to claim both revenue and direction? The question is variously answered by three schools of social reformers. The school that draws. Its inspiration from the writings of Mr. Henry George is anxious only to secure the revenue of the land. By gradually increasing taxation this school would transfer all land reve nues from the present proprietors to the nation. With the control of the land they would not interfere. Another school of land nationalizers, led by Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, take exactly the opposite view. In their opinion, to interfere with the monetary rights of the present owners would be unjustifiable all they care about is the power to control the use of the land. This power they would transfer to the State, and at the same time guarantee to the dis possessed landholders a permanent income calculated on their present receipts. Lastly, we have the socialists, who want both the revenue and the control.

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