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of better prices. But they could not write any considerable part
of these high prices into their capital, through the sale of their
farms, since the community would take most of the advance
in selling prices.
A man with a good farm would find it wise to hold it until
the end of his working life. He would have a privilege worth
transmitting to a son if the state wisely refrained from taxing
such inheritances.
But would not the danger arise that these privileged land-
owners would eventually become absentee landlords, living in the
towns or in Florida or California, and stripping the land of its
surplus? There would be a danger of this unless the State had
the ingenuity to levy a special tax on lands not operated by their
owners, a tax heavy enough to discourage the development of this
form of property right.
VIII
It may be objected that such a tax would operate to produce
a certain rigidity of status in rural relations. A good farm would
often remain generation after generation in the same family.
Small farms would not so easily be merged into larger and more
economical ones; farms that are too large would not be so easily
subdivided. Suppose we admit that there is something in these
objections. Yet the disadvantages are insignificant in comparison
with the benefits that would flow from a better stabilized system
of farm tenures.
With the reduction in the rate of farm turnover the mortgage
indebtedness would be gradually paid off and the balance of
exchange of products between country and city put on a sound
basis. The country community would attain the means of
improvement and would become a more agreeable place to live.
The greater stability of tenures would not only make the social
life of the country more satisfying, but it would lay a basis for
cooperation such as cannot exist where the farm population is
ceaselessly shifting.
The gains from cooperation, from improvements in farm prac-
tice, in transportation, would fall to the farmer as cultivator, not
as landowner.
If it appeared desirable to effect an artificial increase in agri-
cultural prices through public action, the benefits would fall to