Preface to the Book

Land Tenure and Unemployment
by Frank Geary

A.S. Comyns Carr

[Published in London by George allen & Unwin Ltd., 1925]

I am very glad to have the opportunity of contributing a few words by way of preface to this interesting study. It will be valuable to every student of the land question to have the facts — particularly as to its history — brought together so concisely and at the same time with such full documentary support. Even those who do not find themselves entirely or even at all in agreement with Mr. Geary's conclusions will, I am sure, find his book extremely stimulating.

There is a tendency nowadays among a certain school of economists and social reformers to overlook the important part which the land question plays in problems of to-day; because it is seen that in a great many cases the actual price or rent of land forms but a small proportion of the value of the property which is erected upon it there is a tendency to assume that an improvement in our land system could produce but small results. This appears to me to be a fallacy for several reasons. In the first place all forms of wealth, when traced to their source, are products of the soil, and one should look at the toll which the ownership of land has levied upon them at every stage of production in order to form an idea of its importance. Moreover, the share which the land-owner is able to exact tends to absorb, and sometimes more than absorb, the narrow margin between profit and loss in even a substantial proportion of the enterprises which are or might be undertaken by industrious folk, while he has contributed nothing towards the success of those enterprises. It seems to me to follow that, even if that rent is only a small proportion of the total cost of production, it is just that element which forms the decisive factor in producing stagnation and unemployment. It is an interesting speculation to consider how differently the great industrial development of this country might have worked out if it had not been preceded and accompanied by the vast enclosures of land to which Mr. Geary calls attention.

There appears to be no doubt that on the one hand agriculture conducted under the system in force under the land laws of Great Britain for many years past has failed, and still fails, to make full use of the resources of our country; and on the other hand that the development of our industrial life and the growth of great cities have by the same laws been forced into unnatural channels with unsatisfactory results. If, moreover, we include in the land question, as undoubtedly we should do, the subject of taxation, local and Imperial, as applied to real property, we see at once an influence of a most far-reaching and sinister character upon the development of agriculture, industry, and building.

Anyone who will study Mr. Geary's book cannot fail to be convinced that here is a vast problem for solution. If it stimulates many to the further study of that problem I am sure that Mr. Geary will have rendered a valuable service.