enditure of the ratepayers' money
in sanitation and other improvements which make the place one where
people can live and industry can thrive. Directly and indirectly, the
community creates the site value. The landlord receives it, and,
receiving it, can charge any one who wants to live or carry on industry
upon the site with rent to the full amount. The land-nationalizer,
looking at rights of property purely from the point of view of the
individual, denies the justice of this arrangement, and he sees no
solution except this--that the monopoly value should pass back to the
community which creates it. Accordingly, he favours the taxation of site
value to its full amount. Another element of monopoly arises from
industries in which competition is inapplicable--the supply of gas and
water, for example, a tramway service, and in some conditions a railway
service. Here competition may be wasteful if not altogether impossible;
and here again, on the lines of a strictly consistent individualism, if
the industry is allowed to fall into private hands the owners will be
able to secure something more than the normal profits of competitive
industry. They will profit by monopoly at the expense of the general
consumer, and the remedy is public control or public ownership. The
latter is the more complete and efficacious remedy, and it is also the
remedy of municipal socialism. Lastly, there may be forms of monopoly
created by the State, such as the sale of liquor as restricted by the
licensing system. In accordance with competitive ideas the value so
created ought not to pass into private hands, and if on social grounds
the monopoly is maintained, the taxation of licensed premises ought to
be so arranged that the monopoly value returns to the community.

Up to this point a thoroughly consistent individualism can work in
harmony with socialism, and it is this partial alliance which has, in
fact, laid down the lines of later Liberal finance. The great Budget of
1909 had behind it the united forces of Socialist and individualist
opinion. It may be added that there is a fourth form of monopoly which
would be open to the same double attack, but it is one of which less has
been heard in Great Britain than in the United States. It is possible
under a competitive system for rivals to come to an agreement. The more
powerful may coerce the weaker, or a number of equals may agree to work
together. Thus competition may defeat itself, and industry m