The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

CHAPTER IX

A RESERVATION ABOUT LAND AND RENT

Ir policy, tinctured by compassion, dictates the stabilisation of unearned incomes, it does not follow that the same rule necessarily applies to rent.

Rent and interest have one quality in common: each is an emanation of economic power. Beyond that the comparison ends. For whereas interest may, and frequently does, represent some kind of industrial effort, rent is the exploitation of an effect of nature enriched by the mere existence of the community. But I would not care to push any distinction between rent and interest too far, for our social system has fused the two into an economic unity.

Nevertheless, the distinction exists, for the obvious reason that land is the basis of all life; its use, if not its possession, is of universal concern. I may or may not fash myself about the unearned income of A.B., yet if C.D. owns the land upon which I live and work, his rent and the conditions surrounding the rent—restrictive covenants, amenities, slums and a thousand other considerations—are of vital moment tome. Thus,