GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 21 
11,000 than has Jones over the facilities afforded by 
society for the promotion of private business. 
IX.—The Tax Imposed by Time 
A representative real estate man of Boston has said 
that the lifetime of the best new buildings in the city 
cannot be figured to exceed two score years, and that 
with swiftly accelerating changes they will have to 
give way in forty years to a new and better order. 
Granting these facts, if during the forty years the new 
buildings shall yield to the landlord interest upon their 
cost and 2\ per cent annually for depreciation, he is 
at no disadvantage from the necessity of tearing down 
and building greater, while both labour, which builds 
buildings, and business, which uses buildings, will be 
greatly benefited by such a process. What a paradise 
any American city might be made if built over new 
every forty years! Yet the users of the buildings 
can well afford to pay 2\ per cent a year for such 
a luxury. 
Any sensible readjustment and equalisation of 
taxation should take this annual depreciation directly 
into account as a tax imposed by time upon all pro 
ducts of labour, a tax so heavy as to seem an instant 
excuse for exempting them from all other taxes. 
On the other hand, while time is engaged in the 
destruction of the building, it is occupied in the con 
struction of the land value. 
A conspicuous example of the contrariety of this 
time agency is found in the biography of a once modern 
building that in 1870 supplanted a colonial residence 
which for several years previous to 1809 was the 
residence of John Quincy Adams.