SOCIAL  PROPERTY  AMENABLE  TO  TAXATION  IOI

public  to  reap  the  advantage  in  lower  prices.  But  any
one  who  goes  over  the  most  remunerative  kinds  of
industry  will  find  that  many  of  these  derive  their  character
from  dependence  upon  natural  or  legal  monopoly.  The
strong  position  of  such  a  trade  as  brewing  is  explained
by  a  combination  of  natural  and  legal  monopoly.  In  all
such  trades  elements  of  profits  are  apt  to  emerge  which
are  not  the  necessary  interest  upon  capital,  nor  results  of
skill  in  production  or  enterprise  in  management,  but  are
simply  due  to  a  power  of  monopoly  or  in  other  words
to  the  pressure  of  public  needs.  Even  where  no  direct
assistance  is  derived  from  natural  or  legal  monopoly,  a
combination  of  capital  strong  enough  to  crush  out  or
keep  down  effective  competition  may  obtain  so  strong  a
control  of  the  market  through  a  “ring,”  a  “syndicate,”
“  trust,  "  or  other  business  structure,  as  to  exercise  a  similar
power  of  taxing  the  public  for  its  private  profit.  All  this
body  of  rents  and  profits  represents  a  property  made  by
public  efforts  and  needs  which  might,  wherever  it  can  be
discovered,  legitimately  pass  into  the  public  possession.
In  many  cases  it  may  be  difficult,  in  some  perhaps
impossible,  to  discriminate  economic  rents  and  monopoly
profits  from  those  growths  of  value  which  are  needed  for
the  maintenance  of  the  private  effort  and  enterprise
which  co-operated  to  produce  them.  But  economic
analysis  discloses  the  fact  that  there  does  exist  a  large
fund  of  “  unearned  ”  incomes,  the  private  ownership  of
which  is  justified  neither  by  natural  “right”  nor  by
expediency,  which  could  economically  be  taken  by  the
public  and  used  for  public  purposes.  These  unearned
elements  of  income  are  not  needed  to  induce  the  application ­
  of  individual  effort  in  those  who  at  present  own