GROUND RENT A SOCIAL PRODUCT 27 
The fifty-five millions are, we submit, the “income" 
in very truth earned by the city and people of Boston 
— created by their actual labour and actual expendi 
ture. Under the single tax Boston would pay all its 
current expenses out of this legitimate $55,000,000 
income of its own, earned by itself, instead of allow 
ing four-fifths, or $45,000,000, of this amount to be 
divided, through the channel of special privilege, into 
unearned incomes, thus aggravating those inequalities 
in distribution of wealth which people are wont to 
declaim against as partial and wrong. 
While that part of the ground rent of Boston that 
goes to individuals may be said to be unearned by 
them, rent as a whole can hardly be said to be un 
earned; having been produced by society, it may 
truthfully be said to be earned by society, and hence 
R may go to it as its wages, just as properly as his 
earnings go to the individual who works for wages, 
if a railroad has the special privilege of a monopoly 
m the transportation of coal from the Pennsylvania 
eoal mines, or in the transportation of people, why 
n °t tax the railroad in proportion to the value of its 
franchise? The private monopoly of a natural 
resource is a special privilege. If the private owner 
ship of the two or three billion tons of unmined anthra- 
c ite coal is a special privilege, why not tax it what 
others would give for the privilege of mining and 
marketing it, thus making all the people sharers in 
What is called a natural bounty? If the private appro 
priation of a billion dollars’ worth of iron ore is a 
special privilege, would it not be “proportionate and 
reasonable” for its owners to pay in taxation one- 
hulf at least of the value of that privilege? It is 
becoming common to scold about trusts and monopo