GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 
1 5 
social service constitutes the maintenance of 
ground rent. 
A simple illustration may help to an appreciation 
of the absurd absence of a true economy in tax affairs 
to-day. A landlord owns a factory which requires 
steam power, and which is useless and worthless 
without it. Another man owns a steam plant, and 
furnishes steam to factories at so much per horse power. 
The man who hires and uses the factory pays factory 
rent to his landlord, who furnishes the factory, and 
steam rent to the man who furnishes the steam. He 
Would smile if you should talk to him about paying 
his steam rent to the landlord who does not furnish it. 
In vivid contrast with this sensible performance we 
may take the case of another landlord who owns a 
store, requiring public service and convenience, and 
useless without it. The municipality owns and runs 
a public service plant, and furnishes public service 
at a cost of so much per thousand dollars’ worth. 
The man who hires and uses the store pays store rent 
to his landlord, who furnishes the store, but, by a 
strange perversion, he pays his public service rent 
to the same landlord. Should he not pay his public 
service rent to the public that furnishes it? 
Inasmuch as all these contributions to its main 
tenance, so far as enumerated, are from the treasuries 
of the people, what can ground rent possibly be, if 
it is not a social product? 
VII.—An Illustration: The Ground Rent of 
Boston 
A dense skepticism and, indeed, a denser ignorance, 
seem to obtain even in regard to the simple fact that