Chapter XIII: Section CLVI

INFLUENCE OF ADVANCING CIVILIZATION ON RENT.

Advancing civilization contributes in three different ways to raise rents.[156-1] The growth of population necessitates either a more _intensive_ agriculture (higher farming), or causes it to extend over less fertile parcels of land, or parcels less advantageously situated.[156-2] If the growth of population be attended by an increase of capital, this happens in a still higher degree. The people now consume, if not more, at least wheat of finer quality, more and better fed live stock; the consequence of which is, that the demands made on the land are increased. Lastly, if the population be gradually concentrated in large cities, this fact also must contribute to raise rents, because it requires a multitude of costly transportations of agricultural produce and so increases the cost of production (up to the time of consumption) on the less advantageously situated land.[156-3] [156-4]

As most of the symptoms of a higher civilization become apparent earliest, and in the most striking manner, in large cities, so also a rise in rents is first felt in them. The building of houses may be considered as the most _intensive_ of all cultivation of land and that which is most firmly fixed to the soil.[156-5] Rent has nowhere an unsurpassable maximum any more than a necessary minimum.

[Footnote 156-1: _Jung_, Lehrbuch der Cameralpraxis, 1790,
182, has so little idea of this that he is of opinion that
farm-rent must grow ever smaller.]

[Footnote 156-2: According to _Schmoller_, in the
Mittheilungen des landwirthschaftlich. Instituts zu Halle,
1865, 112 seq., the average farm-rent of the Prussian
domains per _morgen_, and the population to the square mile,
amounted:

===============+============+============+============+==========
_District._ | _1849._ | _1864._ | _1849._ | _1858._
---------------+------------+------------+------------+----------
| _Thalers._ | _Population_
| | _per square mile_
Königsberg, | 0.73 | 1.16 | 2076 | 2298
Gumbinnen, | 0.59 | 0.76 | 2059 | 2249
Danzig, | 1.02 | 1.51 | 2656 | 2926
Marienwerder, | 0.63 | 1.06 | 1944 | 2135
Posen, | 0.69 | 1.07 | 2789 | 2857
Bromberg, | 0.69 | 1.10 | 2116 | 2322
Stettin, | 1.07 | 1.73 | 2355 | 2614
Cöslin, | 0.83 | 1.30 | 1735 | 1940
Stralsund, | 0.95 | 1.50 | 2347 | 2549
Breslau, | 1.19 | 1.45 | 4733 | 5034
Liegnitz, | 1.17 | 1.75 | 3676 | 3763
Oppeln, | 0.86 | 1.20 | 3973 | 4433
Potsdam, | 1.08 | 1.59 | 3317 | 3640
Frankfort, | 1.29 | 2.00 | 2446 | 2660
Magdeburg, | 2.31 | 2.98 | 3290 | 3508
Werseburg, | 2.35 | 3.03 | 3934 | 4270
Erfurt, | 2.04 | 2.55 | 5621 | 5735
Münster, | .... | 2.03 | 3192 | 3299
Minden, | 2.48 | 2.62 | 4841 | 4808
===============+============+============+============+==========

Compare the review of rents in the states of the Zollverein,
in _v. Viehbahn_, Statistik, II, 979. It is difficult to
compare different countries with one another in this
respect, because it is seldom certain whether the word rent
means exactly the same thing in them. Besides, it should not
be overlooked, how difficult it is to ascertain what rent,
in the strict sense of the term, as used by _Ricardo_, is.]

[Footnote 156-3: Moreover, the rise of rents, in so far as
it depends on the greater cost of transportation to a
growing market, becomes progressively slower. The concentric
circles about that point increase in a greater ratio than
the radii.]

[Footnote 156-4: As to the history of rents in England, a
comparison of the years from 1480 to 1484, with the most
recent times, shows that the amount of rent estimated in
money in agricultural districts, where no very great
"improvements" have been made, have increased as 1 to
80-100, while the price of wheat has increased 12-fold and
wages 10-fold. (_Rogers_, in the Statist. Journal, 1864,
77.) According to _Hume_, History of England, ch. 33, it
seems that rents under Henry VIII. were only 1/10 of those
usually paid in his time, while the price of commodities was
only 1/4 of the modern. _Davenant_, Works, II, 217, 221,
estimates the aggregate rent of land, houses and mines, at
the beginning of the seventeenth century, at £6,000,000;
about 1698, at £14,000,000; capitalized respectively at
£72,000,000 and £252,000,000. About 1714, _J. Bellers_,
Proposals for Employing the Poor, puts it at £15,000,000;
about 1726, _Erasm. Phillips_, State of the Nation in
Respect to Commerce etc., at £20,000,000; about 1771, _A.
Young_, at £16,000,000; about 1800, _Beeke_, Observations on
the Income-Tax, at £20,000,000; about 1804, _Wakefield_,
Essay on Political Economy, at £28,000,000; about 1838,
_McCulloch_, Statist., I, 535, at £29,500,000. The poor tax
in England and Wales, in 1841, was on a valuation of
£32,655,000. (_Porter_, Progress, VI, 2, 614); 1864-5, the
annual value of lands, £46,403,853 (Stat. Journal, 1869.)
Moreover, the income from houses, railroads, etc. (real
property other than lands), increased very much more than
that received from pieces of farming land; between 1845 and
1864-5, the former by 392.8 per cent., and the latter by
27.9 per cent. (_Hildebrand's_ Jahrbb., 1869, II, 383 seq.);
and the income tax of 1857 on £47,109,000. There was a still
more rapid growth of rent in Scotland. In 1770, it was only
£1,000,000-1,200,000: in 1795, £2,000,000; in 1842,
£5,586,000. (_McCulloch_, I, 576, ff.) In Ireland, about
1776, it was only $900,000, according to _Petty_. (Political
Anatomy of Ireland, I, 113.) _A. Young_ assumed it to be
£6,000,000 in 1778; _Newenham_, View of Ireland, about 1808,
£15,000,000. In many parts of the Rosendale Forest in
Lancashire, the land is leased by the ell, at £121, and even
at £131 per acre; i. e., more than the whole forest of
15,300 acres was rented for in the time of James I. In many
of the moorland portions of Lancashire, rent has risen in
150 years, 1,500 and even 3,000 per cent. (Edinburg Rev.,
1843, Febr., 223.)

The amount of rents in Prussia, _Krug_ assumed to be in
1804, 50,000,000 thalers, and _von Viebahn_, Zollverein
Statistik, II, 974, in 1862, 116,500,000 thalers. _Lavergne_
assumed the rents of France after 1850 to be 1,600,000,000
francs (Revue des deux Mondes, Mars, 1868); and _Dutot_,
Journal des Economistes, Juin, 1870, in 1870, at
2,000,000,000. In Norway, the capitalized value of all the
land was assessed at 13,000,000,000 thalers in specie, in
1665; in 1802, at 25,500,000; in 1839, at 64,000,000
thalers. _Blom_, Statistik von Norwegen, I, 145. The older
such estimates are, the more unreliable they are.]

[Footnote 156-5: In Paris, in 1834, the square _toise_ = 37
sq. feet, in the Rue Richelieu and Rue St. Honoré, cost
1,500 to 2,000 francs; in Rue neuve Vivienne, 2,500 to 3,500
francs; in 1857, from 200 to 500 francs per square meter, =
10 sq. feet, was very usual. (_Wolowski_.) Before the gates
of Paris, the rent amounted to as high as 250 francs per
_hectare_; at Fontainebleau, to only from 30 to 40. (Journal
des Economistes, Mars, 1856, 337.) In Market Square,
Philadelphia, land was worth from 3,000 to 4,000 francs per
sq. _toise_, and in Wall Street, New York, about 4,000
francs. (_M. Chevalier_, Letters sur l'Amérique, 1836, I,
355.) In St. Petersburg, after 6 years, the house frequently
falls to the owner of the area. (_Storch._ by _Rau_, I, 248
f.) In Manchester, the Custom House area cost from 10 to 12
pounds sterling per square yard; in the center of the city,
as high of £40, that is, nearly £200,000 per acre. In
Liverpool, in the neighborhood of the Exchange and of Town
Hall, the cost is from 30 to 40 pounds sterling. (Athenæum,
Dec. 4, 1852.) In London, a corner building on London
street, erected for £70,000, with only three front windows,
pays a rental of £22,000. (Allg. Zeitung, 1 Febr., 1866.)
The villa at Misenum--a very beautiful location--which the
mother of the Gracchi bought for about 5,000 thalers, came
into the possession of L. Lucullus, consul in the year B. C.
74, for about 33 times as much. _Mommsen_, Römisch. Gesch.,
II, 382.]