Made Land, Reclaimed Land

Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's Lectures, with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894) — Appendix: FAQ

Q40. Under the single tax theory what right have you to tax the value of "made land," like the Back Bay of Boston? Is not such land produced by labor?
A. The surface soil is produced by labor. But the foundation — the bottom of a bay, a swamp, a river, or a hole, is not. "Made land" does not differ economically from a house. Its materials are produced from one place to another and adjusted to meet the demand. But nature in the case of the "made land," as in that of the house, supplies the materials and the foundation. The value of the Back Bay of Boston is chiefly the value of a location — a communal value. The single tax would not take the value of "made land"; it would take the value of the space where the "made land" is. ... read the book

Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)

HE term Land in political economy means the natural or passive element in production, and includes the whole external world accessible to man, with all its powers, qualities, and products, except perhaps those portions of it which are for the time included in man's body or in his products, and which therefore temporarily belong to the categories, man and wealth, passing again in their reabsorption by nature into the category, land. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged: Book III, Chapter 14: The Production of Wealth, Order of the Three Factors of Production • abridged: Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production

THAT land is only a passive factor in production must be carefully kept in mind. . . . Land cannot act, it can only be acted upon. . . . Nor is this principle changed or avoided when we use the word land as expressive of the people who own land. . . .

That the persons whom we call landowners may contribute their labor or their capital to production is of course true, but that they should contribute to production as landowners, and by virtue of that ownership, is as ridiculously impossible as that the belief of a lunatic in his ownership of the moon should be the cause of her brilliancy. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged: Book III, Chapter 15, The Production of Wealth: The First Factor of Production — Land • abridged: Part III, Chapter 10: Order of the Three Factors of Production

I AM writing these pages on the shore of Long Island, where the Bay of New York contracts to what is called the Narrows, nearly opposite the point where our legalized robbers, the Custom-House officers, board incoming steamers to ask strangers to take their first American swear, and where, if false oaths really colored the atmosphere the air would be bluer than is the sky on this gracious day. I turn from my writing-machine to the window, and drink in, with a pleasure that never seems to pall, the glorious panorama.

"What do you see?"  If in ordinary talk I were asked this, I should of course say, "I see land and water and sky, ships and houses, and light clouds, and the sun drawing to its setting over the low green hills of Staten Island and illuminating all."

But if the question refer to the terms of political economy, I should say, "I see land and wealth." Land, which is the natural factor of production; and wealth, which is the natural factor so changed by the exertion of the human factor, labor, as to fit it for the satisfaction of human desires. For water and clouds, sky and sun, and the stars that will appear when the sun is sunk, are, in the terminology of political economy, as much land as is the dry surface of the earth to which we narrow the meaning of the word in ordinary talk. And the window through which I look; the flowers in the garden; the planted trees of the orchard; the cow that is browsing beneath them; the Shore Road under the window; the vessels that lie at anchor near the bank, and the little pier that juts out from it; the trans-Atlantic liner steaming through the channel; the crowded pleasure-steamers passing by; the puffing tug with its line of mud-scows; the fort and dwellings on the opposite side of the Narrows; the lighthouse that will soon begin to cast its far-gleaming eye from Sandy Hook; the big wooden elephant of Coney Island; and the graceful sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge, that may be discovered from a little higher up; all alike fall into the economic term wealth — land modified by labor so as to afford satisfaction to human desires. All in this panorama that was before man came here, and would remain were he to go, belongs to the economic category land; while all that has been produced by labor belongs to the economic category wealth, so long as it retains its quality of ministering to human desire.

But on the hither shore, in view from the window, is a little rectangular piece of dry surface, evidently reclaimed from the line of water by filling in with rocks and earth. What is that? In ordinary speech it is land, as distinguished from water, and I should intelligibly indicate its origin by speaking of it as "made land." But in the categories of political economy there is no place for such a term as "made land." For the term land refers only and exclusively to productive powers derived wholly from nature and not at all from industry, and whatever is, and in so far as it is, derived from land by the exertion of  labor, is wealth. This bit of dry surface raised above the level of the water by filling in stones and soil, is, in the economic category, not land but wealth. It has land below it and around it, and the material of which it is composed has been drawn from land; but in itself it is, in the proper speech of political economy, wealth; just as truly as the ships I behold are not land but wealth, though they too have land below them and around them and are composed of material drawn from land. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged: Book IV, Chapter 6, The Distribution of Wealth: Cause of Confusion as to Property • abridged

... go to "Gems from George"