SECOND BOSTON OBJECT LESSON 77 
accordance with a natural economic law, instead of 
a variable and impossible statute law. This is all 
there is in the single tax of complexity, absurdity, 
or impracticability. 
The City of Boston is lavish of its millions in order 
that Washington Street space may yield proportion 
ately more business, rhore profit, more convenience, 
and more satisfaction to people. Enterprising syn 
dicates of men and capital are ready and watching 
to make the most of the situation. It is the unequal 
advantage enjoyed by the owners of lots small or 
large that hinders this realisation of the city’s good 
intentions. This is the canker that destroys the 
city’s harvest from its planted millions. 
The people tax themselves 1100,000 to build a 
beautiful Milton, Dorchester, Newton, Cambridge, or 
Lynn boulevard. Then straightway the same 
people again pay interest on the same outlay in 
the form of ground rent, before they can establish 
their homes and enter into the enjoyment of their 
own benefactions. In other words, they deposit 
? 100,000 in the ground, and then pay 5 per cent 
annually for the privilege of appropriating the 
interest thereon. 
Why should a city which creates the enormous 
v a!ue of its land, be powerless to insure, or even to 
facilitate, the use of it by the provision of suitable 
buildings thereon because paralysed and checkmated 
by unequal rights vested in the dead hand of cor 
porations, trustees, and institutions. 
German cities exercise themselves about the muni- 
cipal “housing of the poor.” Why should not 
American cities cast about to remove the municipal