Let us take a few concrete instances: It was not until dark alleys were found to facilitate the work of criminals that municipalities were driven to light the streets; it was not until a district of Birmingham had become a menace to public welfare because its filth engendered both disease and crime that the municipality was driven to put an end to it; it was not until cholera began its ravages that municipalities were driven to provide clean dwellings; it was not until the evils attending imperfect transportation became intolerable that New York was driven to build subways; it was not until fires devastated the city that New York organized its fire department; it was not until the filth of the streets was intolerable that the city took the cleaning of streets out of the hands of private contractors. Up to the present time municipal activities have been forced into existence by the growth of the evils to a point where they could no longer be endured.
Over a century ago it was said that municipalities were "sores upon the body politic," and this phrase has been solemnly quoted ever since as a sort of slogan of despair; whereas the municipality might be and ought to be, if intelligently administered, the mainspring of all our great national activities. The Socialist asks that, instead of waiting for evils to become intolerable before we attempt to cope with them and then adopting measures which, because they come late, are inadequate, we should take up municipal administration as a housekeeper takes hold of the administration of her house, adopting measures which we must inevitably in the end adopt before the evils become intolerable, and before the city becomes so over-built as to make the difficulty of coping with these evils insurmountable.
This is the spirit in which a citizen should approach the question of city land; and if we do approach it in this spirit, the problem of how to put an end to the evils arising from private ownership of land is in many respects similar to those which present themselves in our effort to put an end to the evils of private ownership of stock.
For example, some land will be in the hands of men who have contributed absolutely nothing to its value. They have inherited it, and upon the rent which conditions have enabled them to exact they have lived lives of uselessness if not of profligacy. One has abjured his American nationality to avoid the payment of the personal tax, and applies the sums which he receives, thanks to the industry of the community in New York, to the publishing of a conservative newspaper in London opposed to every effort permanently to improve the conditions of humanity there. Some land will be in the hands of men and women who have invested it in the economies of a laborious life and for whom it represents an old-age pension. Between these two, there is every degree of merit.
The problem of compensation in taking over of city land will prove as complicated as in the socialization of industries, and very much the same principles will apply. Every city presents problems of its own, and it is difficult, therefore, to lay down general principles applicable to all cities. But one point seems clear: We shall have to live in our cities while we are transforming them, and this means that the transformation will have to be slow. If the state undertakes to transform the slums into habitable tenements, the present families of the slums must be accommodated somewhere while the transformation takes place.
Rebuilding our cities to accommodate them to the changed conditions of a coöperative commonwealth, will be little more than doing on a large scale what Birmingham did on a small scale when it converted its slums into Corporation Street. If it is to be done well, it must be preceded with the deliberate preparation indispensable to the success of every large undertaking.
The Single Taxers are right when they claim that the enhancement of the value of land due to the industry of the many ought not to be appropriated by the idle few. The "unearned increment" should accrue to the whole community and not to a few landowners. As, therefore, the enhancement of the value of land due to crowding is a peculiar feature of the city, and distinguishes it from the country, it seems indispensable that city land should eventually be owned by the city; by the mass of citizens who labor and dwell therein.
Another thing seems clear, namely, that a city cannot be transformed to suit the needs of a coöperative commonwealth so long as the city is owned by a few individuals who, by virtue of their ownership, have a right to resist the transformation.
The ownership in city land is, therefore, totally different from ownership in farmland. In the latter case, there is no necessity for suppressing private ownership; whereas in the city, such suppression seems indispensable. It may be added that the beautiful parts of every city are due to state ownership. The Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV; the Place Vendôme was built by Louis XIV; the Place de la Concorde was built by Louis XV; the Champs Elysées and the Arc de l'Etoile were built by the two Napoleons. Practically all the great monuments of Paris were built by the state. Her streets were planned by the state, and the height of her private buildings regulated by the state. The same thing is true of London and Vienna. It is in our American cities alone that private initiative being allowed full sway, our buildings look like ill-assorted books in a neglected library; that we are committed to interminable streets and avenues which pass what monuments we have but lead up to none. In a word, our cities are committed to conditions so inartistic that the task of making them beautiful seems impossible short of destroying and rebuilding them altogether.