GROUND  RENT  A  SOCIAL  PRODUCT  9

The  value  of  these  special  privileges  is  held  to  be
ground  rent,  which  in  turn  is  held  to  be  very  largely,
if  not  entirely,  a  social  product.
IV.—The  Office  of  Ground  Rent
The  true  office  of  ground  rent  is  that  of  a  board
of  equalisation—equalisation  of  taxation,  of  distribution, ­
  and  of  opportunity.  The  tendency  of  an
increase  in  the  tax  upon  ground  rent  is  not  only  to
equalise  taxation  and  distribution,  but  to  equalise
the  opportunity  of  access  to  what  is  erroneously  called
the  land,  which  of  itself,  even  in  a  city,  would  be  of
little  or  no  use  if  it  had  a  perpetual  fifty-foot  tight
board  fence  around  it.  In  this  clear  distinction
between  land  and  land  value,  which  cannot  be  too
critically  noted,  may  there  not  be  found  an  explosion
of  the  notion  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  the  private
appropriation  of  ground  rent,  because  his  father
bought  and  paid  for  the  land  fifty  or  one  hundred
years  ago?
The  question  is:  When  he  bought  the  land  fifty
or  one  hundred  years  ago,  did  he  buy  and  pay  for
the  land  value  of  to-day?  In  1686  a  company  having
five  shares  and  five  stockholders  bought  a  lot  of
land  in  Philadelphia  for  |j.  In  1900  the  same  company, ­
  with  its  five  shares  and  five  stockholders,  sold
the  value  of  the  same  land  for  $1,000,000.  Does  it
sound  reasonable  to  say  that  for  one  pound  sterling
in  1686  these  five  men  bought  and  paid  for  the
$1,000,000  land  value  of  1900,  with  its  ground
tent  of  $40,000  a  year?  Would  not  such  a  sale
in  1686  of  goods  to  be  delivered  two  hundred  and
fourteen  years  later  be  dealing  in  futures  with  a