[Letter] Nov.26,1888,Smith College [to F.H. Giddings]

Nov. 26, 1888, Smith College.

Dear Friend,
        Let us stand by
the ship and be land
reformers too. That is my
plan. If a case of
public utility can be
made for condemning and
taking land in cities,
water fronts etc. let
it be done, and let
the public have the
measured increment from
now on. Speculation in
land has I am sure
operated as Adam Smith
showed that speculation in
wheat operated in his time,
it has lessened the violence
of fluctuations. It has
anticipated corners in
land as it were. In
Minneapolis land has been
held here and there
speculatively; this has
caused centrally located lots
to rise in price earlier
than they would have done.
Settlement has gone by the
speculator's holdings to more
suburban sites. Had the center been
filled completely the later rise in price
of lots there located would have been violent.
In the end the center lets have been
very fully utilized. Another result would
have been that the center would have been
completely filled at an early day with small
and cheap buildings. There would have been a
serious obstruction to the erection of good ones.
Up to a certain point natural law has worked
admirably in Minneapolis. How about the later
stages? I have a few ideas that I will communicate
to you on that point when we can talk freely. I am
glad to see that we are likely to make
some more complementary studies, after
the fashion of "Distributive Process." You
remember my brief allusion to applying in
relation to advance of the
margin of cultivation, the principle of non-
competing groups (in the monograph on Capital). My
idea was not, I think, identical with the one you
express about varieties in agriculture. I had in view
a complete series of economic uses of land not
all agricultural, and distinguished from each other
by various things among which is "intensiveness" of
utilization i.e. capacity to employ much auxiliary cap. and
labor. I think the results of the two lines of study will be as complementary
and mutually satisfactory as those on Distribution.

                         Yours Very Truly,
                               J. B. Clark