134 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
Further research in urban land utilization and in modes of urban 
transport is needed before a complete theoretical solution can be 
reached, and, of course, after we know what ought to be done 
there remains the problem of getting it done because of politics 
and administrative difficulties. Incidentally it may be pointed 
out that one of the causes of the successive and too intensive 
utilization of land is found in the high taxation of land itself. 
It has, indeed, been suggested that to lessen the tax on the 
land in case of too intensive utilization and to put a higher tax 
on the improvements on the land would bring about an improve- 
ment. Without going further into this subject, it may be said 
that the growing tendency of public control of private rights to 
use land has found expression in a so-called principle of social 
control: The more intensive the use of land, the more highly 
developed must be the social control. 
The general principle of guidance in changes from private to 
public property and from public to private property has been 
formulated as follows: Private property yields best results when 
the social benefits of private property accrue: (1) largely 
spontaneously; (2) when occasionally they are easily secured by 
slight applications of force; (3) when the social benefits of private 
property are secured as the result of single public acts occurring 
at considerable intervals; (4) when in more or less frequent cases 
a continuous and considerable application of force may be needed 
to bring its management up to a socially established ethical 
level. In proportion as the social benefits desired are secured by 
increasingly intensive and increasingly frequent applications of 
public power, the advantages of private property become smaller 
as contrasted with the advantages of public property. 
Taxation of Land. The taxes upon land which constitute the 
government’s share of the income from land are receiving an 
increasing amount of attention from economists because of the 
influence of taxation upon the utilization of natural resources. 
In recent years the tendency has been for the government to 
take in taxes an ever larger proportion of the income from land. 
Due to inequities in the general property tax system in the 
United States, this tax burden has borne more heavily on land 
than on other forms of property. 
Forest Taxation vs. Forest Land Taxation. The uneconomic 
outcome of the wrong method of taxation is clearly seen in the 
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