58 
..THE A B C OF TAXATION 
a high price because its area cannot be increased. 
The limited floor space of Winter Street com 
mands a high average price because its area has 
not been increased. 
How Capital Is Handicapped 
Query. If capital is the friend of labour why 
does it not build better buildings on Winter Street? 
Simply because it cannot get at the land. The land 
owner, being unable or indisposed to build, and unwill 
ing to sell his land, there is no inducement to capital 
to put up lasting buildings to be forfeited at the end 
of the lease. When business from compulsion builds 
for itself in this way, it puts up the cheapest building 
that will answer for the time being, instead of what 
is best for all time. The one hundred and seventy- 
five or more concerns on Winter Street are in the 
merchandise, and not in the building, business. Such 
building is exceedingly disadvantageous to large con 
cerns and impossible to small ones. 
Query. Were the land holder and the business man 
of Winter Street “created free and equal”? The 
extensive alterations and improvements in Shepard, 
Norwell Co.’s stores (Fig. Ill), as in many other cases, 
have been paid for by the tenants, who have also paid 
all taxes on them. At the expiration of the usual 
twenty-year lease, all these improvements revert to 
the owners of the land. Is it fair that the land 
owner should, in the disposal of his land, have 
the benefit of the sharpest kind of competition, 
while the business man is debarred from all kind 
of competition in the obtaining of new buildings? 
Is it not about time that all Winter Street build