hese ways it is possible to account for great differences of
value in regions apparently equal in natural advantages. Thus nobody wants
lands in Turkey, however fertile, in comparison with lands in a free
country like ours. Countries under a poor system of agriculture with
inefficient labor cannot maintain high value of land. Ignorance and
thriftlessness in a community of laborers operates in the same way. Thus
the habits of the people, as well as their laws, enter into the question
of rent. In countries where large estates are parceled out to renters,
generation after generation, the customary terms of leases as to time,
method of payment, adjustment of improvements, restrictions as to methods
of tillage, and requirement of capital, enter largely into the question of
rents. In some the fear of eviction under arrearages cuts a prominent
figure; in others the confiscation of improvements destroys all
enterprise. Upon the continent of Europe, in some places, the payment of
rent in produce,--what we call working of land upon shares,--greatly limits
individual enterprise, though it gives to the land owner a direct control
in the methods employed on the land. Restrictions of law or of custom upon
transfer of ownership always have the effect of diminishing the general
productiveness by hindering the natural competition of productive
enterprise. The result of all laws of entail, by which enormous estates
are held from generation to generation under control of the same family,
is universally deprecated because of its interference with the natural law
of supply and demand as to farms and homes. All such restrictions favor
the spirit of monopoly and cultivate arbitrary power, which in every way
hinders progress.

_Recent decrease of land values._--In the United States during recent years
there has been a decided shrinkage of land values in most of the country.
Several evident causes appear worthy of mention. The most evident is a
rapid increase of farms on the western plains, recently bringing their
products into the competition. These prairie regions give the largest
range for farming in the world. In the same connection is the
introduction, upon these immense fields of cheap land, of extensive
machinery by which the productive power of labor is multiplied. The labor
of one man for 300 days is said to have produced in California 5,000
bushels of wheat, so that one man's labor on many acres gives to each of
1,000 people a barrel o