180 BOOM OF 1919 AND SUBSEQUENT DEPRESSION 
in view of the continuous supply of capital through loans, less 
noticeable changes in the rate for interest. The facts necessary 
to indicate the respective movements in the rate of return to 
the different factors are wanting, but consideration of the 
position is not thereby made valueless. Greatest importance in 
this connexion attaches to the case of rent. Whilst the pressure 
of population upon available urban land continued, in so far as 
it was due to the increase in population itself and to an enlarge- 
ment in general purchasing power that was reflected in the 
demand for new houses, some rise in rents was doubtless in- 
evitable. But a more important factor intensifying the pressure 
upon such land is revealed in the tendency, which is now be- 
coming so pronounced, for industries and their attendant 
population to migrate to the seaboard, i.e. to the capital cities. 
This tendency is determined by the movement towards large- 
scale production, by the industrial economies offered by a 
location at or near one of the major ports, by nearness to the 
chief consumption centres, and by the lay-out of the railways. 
The migration of industries formerly carried on in country 
towns carries with it the smaller subsidiary industries and their 
population, and also that quota which is concerned with the 
business of domestic supplies, from foodstuffs to amusements. 
The use of the motor for business purposes is a further factor 
in concentrating the personnel of distribution services in the 
cities; and this is paralleled by the tendency for country 
residents to use the cities as shopping centres by means of the 
private car and road motor services of all kinds. All these are 
agencies assisting in the concentration of population in the 
capitals ; and it is merely a logical sequence that the return to 
owners of urban land is out of all proportion to the service 
which that land is performing in the matter of production. It 
8, in fact, a matter for serious consideration how far high land 
values have contributed to the high costs of both primary and 
secondary production, and to the recent recession of business 
right through the Commonwealth. 
The statistics connected with the function of land as a factor 
in production are, however, open to the objection that they are 
mainly based on the rent of urban dwellings. This does not, 
nevertheless, invalidate their use in this connexion. In the first 
place the rise in rents for business and factory sites has been