What Is Rent?

Willard Grosvenor

[Reprinted from Instead Of A Magazine,
edited by Herman Kuehn, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1915-16]

The word "Rent" has, on, occasion, been wrested from its relevant meaning in order to bolster up the interests and prejudices of those who seek to benefit by giving the word a fanciful meaning. As with "house" rent. Rent of a house is repayment for a service. It is recognition of that service that lapels the house-user to pay.

Rent of land rests entirely on a legal warrant for the collection of a license fee permitting the licensee to live on that particular part of the globe.

But for this legal warrant there would be no Rent for the use of land.

Rent is that part of the product that by law is apportioned the holder of the legal claim to be the owner of the land on which production has obtained. Aside from such legal title there would not be any basis for the common belief that the title-holder "owns" the land. In order that one may acknowledge the "ownership" of land he must perforce admit that the sanction under which the title is held is valid. If the title of any land-ownership be traced to its origin it will be found to rest upon the superstition that the natural resources were "owned" by the king, and that it was the royal prerogative to parcel out the land to his grantees.

As men are becoming more intelligent a "belief" in ownership under royal (or other governmental) grants and subventions is lessening.

Rent, then, is that part of the product as is "due" to the respect in which we hold the king's grant. The payment of rent is Duty to the King.

In the absence of the legally-instituted relation of Landlord and Tenant there can be no Rent.

One hears talk about "economic" rent, and "potential" rent. These are mere figures of speech. They indicate disparities in the productivity and location of some sites as compared with others. Those presenting advantages, whether cultivated or not, whether in anywise used or not, are assumed to "produce" rent.

No such advantage deserves to be classed as Rent unless some one is empowered to collect tribute for its use.

It has long been a favorite pastime with arithmeticians to figure out the interest that would have been earned by putting out one dollar at six-per centum, compounded semi-annually one thousand years ago. It is good slate exercise, truly; but no interest at all has arisen unless it is paid to some one. Precisely the same is true of Rent. If it isn't paid it isn't rent.

Site advantages doubtless exist, but these would not result in rent in the absence of an illogical deference to the superstition at the hack of a belief in land ownership.

That an occupier and user may be offered, and may accept, a premium for some particularly choice location, is true. But this premium will not be Rent. It is only classed AS rent by such as want a justification for the notion that landlordism benefits others than landlords.