Sec.5. The Necessity of Rent.  Behind all such detailed applications there lies a more general consideration which deserves attention.  The way in which the land of a country is used, the way in which it is apportioned between the countless alternative employments that are possible, is a most important matter, more important perhaps than any questions as to the size of the incomes which particular landowners receive by virtue of their rights of ownership.  How is this apportionment effected as things are now?  The answer is clear:  mainly by the agency of either rent or price.  The business which finds it worth while to offer the highest rent or the highest price for any piece of land will, as a rule, be able to command its use.  And, with this as the governing principle, an apportionment is secured between shops, offices, factories, agriculture, between the immense variety of different employments covered by each of these broad headings; not a rigid unvarying apportionment, but one which constantly changes as economic circumstances change, and as the margin of transference between different occupations moves hither and thither.  This apportionment takes place at present as the result of the independent decisions and bargains of many private individuals, who are thinking mainly of their own interests, and not of those of the community.  But this state of affairs might be altered.  The land might be nationalized and allocated to its various uses by the co-ordinated labors of a great State department, or some other agency of the collective will.  However improbable such a change, it is perfectly conceivable.  But what is not conceivable is that any State department should handle the job with a success even approaching that of the present system, unless it continued to use, as its main instrument, the criterion of either rent or price.  That a piece of land would yield a higher rent in one occupation than in any other is not conclusive evidence that it is best to devote it to the former purpose, but it is very good evidence, and it should be allowed to prevail unless it is demonstrably outweighed, as it possibly might often be, by considerations of a different kind.  That it would not be well for the community to employ land in the city of London for corn-growing purposes, however desirable might be a revival of home agriculture, is so obvious that it may seem to have no bearing on the present issue.  But it is only an extreme indication of the absurd and wasteful use of our natural resources, which would grow up slowly but surely, if we dispensed with ideas of rent and price as sordid irrelevancies, and allocated our land on the basis of a balancing of the loftiest arguments of a vague and sentimental character.  If you are prepared for the distribution of land to become stereotyped, for each piece to continue indefinitely in its present use, then indeed you might dispense with rent, as primitive societies very largely do.  That would mean stagnation and, for an industrial