LAND ECONOMICS
129
of the utilization of land in agriculture have more than offset the
growth of population. This has in general been true with
respect to the world as a whole, and this is one of the causes of
agricultural distress.
In Chicago and in New York City great attention has been
paid to very high land values, while little attention has been paid
to declining and low land values. The prepossession of
economists, and for that matter the general public, is seen in the
frequent use of the term unearned increment with but little use
of the term unearned decrement. We simply do not know the
facts that we should know. A vast amount of research is needed
to give us an adequate knowledge of the facts. We do know,
however, that decrements are great and significant, as well as
frequently disastrous. At a meeting of the Chicago Regional
Planning Association held about two years ago one of the
speakers stated that in his belief decrements in land values in
Chicago in recent years had equaled increments in land values.
The present writer would be inclined to doubt if that would
hold good just now. But here again we do not know the facts.
We do know that there are many attractive towns and cities in
the country where, as the saying is, one can scarcely give away
land, and where it will not yield what it has cost to bring it to
its present state of ripeness for utilization.
The term ripening costs in land utilization is new. It cannot
be found in any treatise on general economics, and yet it is
something of great significance both in theory and in practice
and unquestionably must modify more or less the popular ideas
in regard to the income or rent of land. Ripening costs which are
a common feature of business generally have not been thoroughly
analyzed with respect to land. Broadly conceived, ripening costs
occur when land is ripening from one use to a higher use, for it
takes time to change from one use to another. They consist of
expenditures made, or income sacrificed, during this period. If
the holder of the land is a private individual, the costs are in
the form of taxes, special assessments, and interest foregone,
which must be paid or sacrificed even when there is no income
from the land. These costs of ripening use are particularly
significant in the case of land because of the large investment
and longer period of time required to change from one use to
another.