have industries that menace the public health. Under existing conditions
the interests involved exert themselves to the utmost to suppress
information relative to the dangers of such industries. With the principle
of compensation in operation, these very interests would be the foremost
in exposing the evils in question. It is no hardship to sell your interest
to the public. Does any one feel aggrieved when the public decides to
appropriate his land to a public use? On the contrary, every possessor of
a site at all suited for a public building or playground does everything
in his power to display its advantages in the most favorable light.

And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property rights
extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not as
yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have learned how
to acquire property for public use without either plundering the private
owner or excessively enriching him. The British application of the Small
Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the large landholder,
without making of him a vociferous champion of the Acts.

Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
let the public be moral at its own expense.

A revolting doctrine, it will be said. Because men have been permitted,
through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out
poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of
wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive
activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away
valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children,