analogies are. The
windfalls which people with artistic gifts are able from time to time
to derive from the sale of a picture--from a Vandyke or a Holbein--may
here and there be very considerable. But pictures do not get in
anybody's way. They do not lay a toll on anybody's labour; they do not
touch enterprise and production at any point; they do not affect any
of those creative processes upon which the material well-being of
millions depends. And if a rise in stocks and shares confers profits
on the fortunate holders far beyond what they expected, or, indeed,
deserved, nevertheless, that profit has not been reaped by withholding
from the community the land which it needs, but, on the contrary,
apart from mere gambling, it has been reaped by supplying industry
with the capital without which it could not be carried on.

If the railway makes greater profits, it is usually because it carries
more goods and more passengers. If a doctor or a lawyer enjoys a
better practice, it is because the doctor attends more patients and
more exacting patients, and because the lawyer pleads more suits in
the courts and more important suits. At every stage the doctor or the
lawyer is giving service in return for his fees; and if the service is
too poor or the fees are too high, other doctors and other lawyers can
come freely into competition. There is constant service, there is
constant competition; there is no monopoly, there is no injury to the
public interest, there is no impediment to the general progress.

Fancy comparing these healthy processes with the enrichment which
comes to the landlord who happens to own a plot of land on the
outskirts or at the centre of one of our great cities, who watches the
busy population around him making the city larger, richer, more
convenient, more famous every day, and all the while sits still and
does nothing! Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are
improved, electric light turns night into day, electric trams glide
swiftly to and fro, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles
off in the mountains--and all the while the landlord sits still. Every
one of those improvements is effected by the labour and at the cost of
other people. Many of the most important are effected at the cost of
the municipality and of the ratepayers. To not one of those
improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist,
contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is
sensibl