186 History of Local Rates 
easy have proceeded not exactly in concert, but in the 
same direction at about the same pace. Difficulties 
are increasing, and if there is any socialist who expects 
a purely national socialism to overthrow the existing 
system either suddenly or by a slow process of evolu- 
tion, he is living in a fool's paradise ; a great measure 
of cosmopolitanism is necessary for any considerable 
progress in a socialistic direction. 
The loudest complaint made on grounds of economy 
against rates as a whole levied under the present 
system is that they discourage “ building,” in which 
berm it is meant to include the investment of new 
capital in all kinds of new immovable and rateable 
property. They certainly do so. In order not to lose 
ourselves in a maze of commercial transactions, let us 
make for the moment the perfectly legitimate assump- 
tion that occupiers build and use their own buildings. 
Then let us ask ourselves why they do not build bigger 
buildings. Obviously not only because of the original 
cost in bricks and mortar, but also because of the con- 
finuing cost of maintaining the buildings themselves 
and their necessary furniture, and of providing all 
kinds of necessary service. In this continuing cost it 
is clear that rates form an element. No matter 
whether a man is contemplating a new building on 
fresh ground, or the rebuilding of an old one, or an 
addition to an old one, he has to take rates into 
account. A professional builder is affected by rates 
just as much. He knows it will not be profitable 
to build anything new, or make any addition to an old 
building, unless an occupier will find it worth while to 
pay rates for the building, as well as to pay interest on 
the cost of construction. No man ever sat down fo