therefore, be safely assumed that the people of Garden City would willingly pay £2 per head in complete discharge of ground-rent and local rates; but to make the case the clearer and stronger, we will test the supposed willingness of the tenants of Garden City to pay such a sum as £2 a year for rates and rents in another way.
For this purpose, let us deal first with the agricultural estate, leaving the town estate to be dealt with separately. Obviously the rent which can be secured will be considerably greater than before the town was built. Every farmer now has a market close to his doors. There are 30,000 townspeople to be fed. Those persons, of course, are perfectly free to get their food stuffs from any part of the world, and in the case of many products will doubtless continue to be supplied from abroad. These farmers are hardly likely to supply them with tea, with coffee, with spices, with tropical fruits or with sugar,[1] and their struggle to compete with America and Russia for the supply of wheat or flour to the town may be as keen as ever. But surely the struggle will not be so despairing. A ray—a beam of hope will gladden the heart of the despairing home-producer of wheat, for while the American has to pay railway charges to the sea-board, charges for Atlantic transit and railway charges to the consumer, the farmer of Garden City has a market at his very doors, and this a market which the rent he contributes will help to build up.[2]
- ↑ The electric light, with cheap motive power for its generation, with glass-houses, may make even some of these things possible.
- ↑ See "Fields, Farms, and Workshops," by Prince Krapotkin, 1/-, and "The Coming Revolution," by Capt. Petavel, 1/-, both published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
