St. Paul daily globe., 1891-01-10
LAND SPECULATION.

the malaria or mosquitoes. No town
will ever admit that it has had one. but
can refer the inquirer to some neigh
boring city where it understands that
such things have been heard OF. When
land is jumping 100 per cent day the
broker speaks of it as healthy activity,
and when people are buying only what
they need and can use the market is
said to be deadly dull, and the boomer
looks about for pastures new.
A local firm of real estate operators,
which has been very successful, gives
as the secret of its prosperity, its ability
to locate boom. One of them puts it
that there is always boom going on
somewhere if one only knows it. he
reads as many newspapers as all ex-
change editor, and when he hears that
things are seething anywhere, he buys
a railroad ticket. rushes to the scene,
and begins to plunge. Long expert
ence has taught him to diagnose the
thing with accuracy. He knows IN
what quarter to buy, when to buy and
how much to buy; and, most of all, he
knows how long to hotd Oh and when
and to whom to sell. He has made tort
une in the business. and has hundred
times viewed wrecks and ruins as desc
late as Carthage without ever shedding
a tear. He has no reason to weep, be-
cause he IS never in at the death. He
has unloaded.
A real estate boom is senseless and
pernicious form of speculation. JOHN
STUART MILL. who was as far from be-
ing socialist as any man who ever
lived, admits in his Political Economy
that there is grave doubt as to whether
the temporary owner is entitled to all
the profits which accrue from the pos
session of property in growing town.
A man may own lot in the heart OF
city which Will increase ten thousand
fold in value from the labor and achieve
ment of his neighbors. The whole COM
munity is the author of the increment,
and there is great deal of justice, he
says. in the view that the whole COM
munity should share in it as well as its
owner, who has earned it no more, and
perhaps not so much, as they. As it is,
there is no surer way to get rich than to
sit still while others are toiling, OBJ
struct progress, and, holding the title to
land in a city, Gull the fruit of the
efforts Of others when it is ripe. There
is no practical way at present to pre-
vent this, but the minds of thoughtful
men are a. ucrk on the problem.
This form of real estate speculation
is not to be condemned, however, in
anything like the terms which befit a
boom violent and short-liyed, based on
excitement and dying when reason re-
turns. This is as baneful as grass
hopper pest or the epidemic of the
Black Death. 1t turns mems thoughts
and habits from the paths of honest
productive industry, which add to the
capital and hence to the strength of a
state. and is sure to be followed by re-
action painful and sometimes fatal.
There is nothing worse to hold than
fctitiousIy inflated real estate on fall
ing market. When the boom dies it is
impossible to run, and recovery will
come only after long interval. Ii a
man CANDLES III stocks he can get out if
he is clever, except in case of panic.
when the market begins to break. The
successful stock operator is the man
who has the courage to stand loss, and
to balance it against the gains which
he has made and will make. If
worst comes to worst. he can throw the
burden on his bank. which in ordinary
times is willing to carry the listed stocks
as collateral. But the real estate plunger
has his money tied up in property which
has no value except as far as there are
others who are willing to buy it. When
they fail it falls back OH his hands, fiat,
earning nothing. to be carried with ac-
cumulating interest charges and taxes
for decade or two, or to be swallowed
up in the vortex of foreclosure. 1t is
one of the compensations of nature that
the man who would inoeulate the body
of a community with loathsome dis
ease suffers himself sooner or later the
worst of all.