hich is
the keynote; and where monopoly prevails, the greater the injury to
society the greater the reward of the monopolist will be....

"Every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only
undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for
himself, and every where to-day the man, or the public body, who
wishes to put land to its highest use is forced to pay a
preliminary fine in land values to the man who is putting it to an
inferior use, and in some cases to no use at all.... _If there is a
rise in wages, rents are able to move forward because the workers
can afford to pay a little more_. If the opening of a new railway
or a new tramway, or the institution of an improved service of
workmen's trains, or the lowering of fares, or a new invention, or
any other public convenience affords a benefit to the workers in
any particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and
therefore the landlord and the ground landlord, one on top of the
other, are able to charge them more for the privilege of living
there." (Italics mine.)[15]

But we cannot believe that the government of Great Britain, which draws
so much of its support from the wealthy free trade merchants and
manufacturers has been persuaded to adopt this new principle so much by
the argument that a land rent weighs on the working classes, though it
is true that the manufacturer may have to pay for this in higher _money_
wages, as it has by that other argument of Mr. Churchill's that it
weighs directly on business.

"The manufacturer proposing to start a new industry," he says,
"proposing to erect a great factory offering employment to
thousands of hands, is made to pay such a price for his land that
the purchase price hangs around the neck of his whole business,
hampering his competitive power in every market, clogging far more
than any foreign tariff in his export competition; and the land
values strike down through the _profits of the manufacturer_ on to
the wages of the workman. The railway company wishing to build a
new line finds that the price of land which yesterday was only
rated at its agricultural value has risen to a prohibitive figure
the moment it was known that the new line was projected; and either
the railway is not built, or, if it is, it is built only on terms