period is really unfair, because up to 1890 the agricultural land of the Far West was a negligible quantity in so far as its value was concerned. These figures do show, however, the immense increase which has occurred.
The really important material on the increase in farm values is available only between 1900 and 1910. The other data are, however, of considerable significance. The whole body of information indicates that in those sections of the United States from which the food products of the country are chiefly derived, the land values during the last few decades have increased at a very rapid pace, culminating in the decade between 1900 and 1910 with an increase for ten years of double, treble or quadruple their 1900 values.
For manifest reasons, the increases in the values of lumber lands were prodigious, yet in many instances they are insignificant when compared with the increases in agricultural land values, which should yield an essentially stable value over so short a period as ten years. Instead agricultural land has fairly leaped into the field of rising values.
While farm values constitute the chief concern of the territory west of the Mississippi, the northeastern section of the United States is interested primarily in city land values. Did the census officials devote even a tithe of the effort to the determination of city land values that were lavished upon farm values, there would be collected a body of data valuable in the extreme. No such procedure has been adopted, however, hence the unfortunate seeker after the truth of changes in city land values is compelled to rely on the little information that may be culled from private sources.
Most American cities have no record at all of the increase in the value of land separate from improvements. Indeed, a prominent landvaluation expert goes so far as to write:
I do not believe that any authentic information concerning the increase of city land value exists. Until assessments are made by the same method everywhere, there will be little in the way of statistics that will exhibit the information you desire.[1]
In one sense this statement is perfectly correct. The data which have been collected on land values are neither authentic nor scientific. They are, however, indicative of a certain tendency which Mr. Richard M. Hurd, president of the Lawyers' Mortgage Company, characterizes by saying.
In general land values have increased enormously in the best part of the leading American cities; the land is now selling, in many sections, from two to three times the figures given in my book.[2] (Published in 1903.)
