pains as has been taken to aggravate the inequality of chances arising from the natural working of the principle had been taken to temper that inequality by every means not subversive of the principle itself; if the tendency of legislation had been to favor the diffusion, instead of the concentration of wealth-to encourage the subdivision of the large masses, instead of striving to keep them together-the principle of individual property would have been found to have no necessary connection with the physical and social evils which almost all Socialist writers assume to be inseparable from it.

Private property, in every defence made of it, is supposed to mean the guarantee to individuals of the fruits of their own labor and abstinence. The guarantee to them of the fruits of the labor and abstinence of others, transmitted to them without any merit or exertion of their own, is not of the essence of the institution, but a mere incidental consequence, which, when it reaches a certain height, does not promote, but conflicts with the ends which render private property legitimate. To judge of the final destination of the institution of property, we must suppose everything rectified which causes the institution to work in a manner opposed to that equitable principle of proportion between remuneration and exertion, on which in every vindication of it that will bear the light, it is assumed to be grounded. We must also suppose two conditions realized, without which neither Communism nor any other laws or institutions could make the condition of the mass of mankind other than degraded and miserable. One of these conditions is universal education; the other, a due limitation of the numbers of the community. With these, there could be no poverty even under the present social institutions.

C. An Indictment of Property

369. PROPERTY FOR USE; PROPERTY FOR POWER1 Aristotle was the first to make the familiar appeal on behalf of private property that it is necessary for the free development of the higher life in the individual, and is the most effective stimulus to character and personal exertion. We are all familiar with the argument, and we feel its force to the full. The average man wants the sphere which he can call "his own" to stimulate him to develop himself, to get room to move freely and realize what he is capable of.

Adapted by permission from Charles Gore, Property, Its Rights and Duties, Introduction, pp. xiv-xxii. (Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1915.)

Property "for use"-what a man needs for true freedom, what even at the utmost he is able to use is a very limited quantity on the whole. Very speedily, as it expands, it becomes "property for power"; it becomes at last the almost unmeasured control by the few rich, not of any amount of unconscious material, but of other men whose opportunity to live and work and eat becomes subject to their will. That is where property has so manifestly gone wrong.

The tenure of property in any community must be judged by its tendency to promote what alone is the real end of civil society-thatis, the best possible life for man in general and all men in particular. The stimulus of unlimited acquisition, it is sometimes pleaded, is necessary to bring out of men their greatest capacity and energy. If you restrain a man's freedom to acquire, you damp his energy. But what about the energy of the masses of men who can acquire no property or not sufficient property to give them secure status and hope? If you go some way towards equalizing opportunity, as between one man and another, will you not stimulate a thousand energies and interests to one which you may check?

The most formidable form of this plea is that which represents to us that in modern industry the most important factor is the brain of the great organizer; that this will only work under the stimulus of unlimited acquisition of wealth and personal power; and that if in our own country this power of unlimited acquisition is restricted, the men of greatest initiative will go to countries where no such restrictions exist, and our own industrial life will suffer. This is a terrible argument the argument that what is most powerful in men cannot be induced to act in the public interest but only on the motive of unrestricted selfishness. There are many experiences in modern industrial life to be set against it. It may, however, be a motive for proceeding gradually in reforming industrial conditions, and a ground for strengthening international fellowship among reformers so that similar tendencies may be apparent in all countries. But it can never be a ground for tying the hands of justice; and it leaves altogether out of account the stimulus to industry which is to be anticipated in any country in which more and more men in the industrial world can feel that it is worth while to do their best.

Property in some sense is necessary for personality. That is certainly true. Let us therefore be careful to guard against any invasion of the real liberty of persons, let us maintain the right of property "for use."

370. PROPERTY AT ITS ZENITH1

But as industry is more productive, so accumulation proceeds on a vastly greater scale in our own civilization; and while the borders of political, religious, national, and one may say social, freedom have widened, the inequalities of wealth have only increased. Yet it is not inequality as such that is the fundamental fact of our system. It is the entire dependence of the masses on land and capital which belong to others. What is more, only a fraction of our population could be supported by agriculture; and for the cotton spinner, the railway man, or the coal miner there is no sense in talking of his owning the means of production as an individual.

Thus, while modern economic conditions have virtually abolished property for use-apart from furniture, clothing, etc.; that is, property as the means of production, for the great majority of the people they have brought about the accumulation of vast masses of property for power in the hands of a relatively narrow class. The contrast is accentuated by the increasing divorce between power and use. The large landowner stood in some direct governing relation to his estate. Responsibility went with ownership, and even survived the explicit association between land tenure and political functions. The capitalist employer, who began to be differentiated from the workman in the earlier part of the modern period, and who was the prominent feature of the first two generations of the industrial revolution, was still, as the name implies, the employer as well as the capitalist. He himself, that is to say, was actively engaged in carrying out the function which his property made possible. But with the progress of accumulation there came further differentiations. It became more and more indisputable that the possession of capital was one thing and the conduct of business another; and with the rise of the joint-stock system capital became so split up into shares and stocks that it has come to be for its owners nothing more than a paper certificate, or an entry in the books of the Bank of England, which they have never seen, meaning to them only what it brings in by the quarter or the half-year. And yet these investments, this capital, is the governing force in the lives of thousands and millions of men scattered throughout the world. It is the instrument by which they are set in motion, by which their labour is sustained, above all,

Taken by permission from L. T. Hobhouse, "The Historical Evolution of Property in Fact and Idea," Property, Its Rights and Duties, pp. 21-23. (Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1915.)

by which it is directed and controlled. The divorce of functions is complete; and what wonder if the owner of capital presents himself to the imagination of the workman merely as an abstract, distant, unknown suction-pump, that is drawing away such and such a percentage of the fruits of industry without making a motion to help in the work?

Lastly, behind the mass of the investors, is the financier, who shuffles all these abstract pieces of capital about, controls their application, takes his commission on the proceeds, and constitutes himself the working centre of industry and commerce. The institu

tion of property has, in its modern form, reached its zenith as a means of giving to the few the power over the life of the many, and its nadir as a means of securing to the many the basis of regular industry, purposeful occupation, freedom, and self-support.

371. PROPERTY AND PRODUCTION1

Individuality in the production of wealth is for the good of society as well as individuality in the spending of it, and must be made possible under any system of property. But it does not follow that such individuality is best realized under the existing system of private property. Against that particular conclusion the following considerations may be urged.

1. Such arguments would not justify the rights of bequest or inheritance. It may be that the power of bequest in some form is a necessary incentive to effort. It is also true that the solidarity of the family which the right of inheritance encourages, though the right of bequest does not, is for the good of society. Nevertheless, in themselves these rights go against the principle of tools to those who can use them, inasmuch as they put great power into the hands of those whose only claim to it is that they are the natural or chosen heirs of those who have shown the capability of using it. Any defence of these rights must ultimately be based upon a recognition of the importance and value of the existence of associations within the State, intermediate between the State and the individual, such as the family or what are called voluntary associations. The attempt to enforce rigidly the principle of tools to those who can use them or money to him who has earned it, and to give all else to the State, would deny the value of all such lesser bonds and communities.

I

Adapted by permission from A. D. Lindsay, "The Principle of Private Property," Property, Its Rights and Duties, pp. 71–81. (Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1915.)

2. Exceptions having been made to the rights of inheritance and of bequest, it is clear on consideration that the amount of money earned in any undertaking is obviously only a very rough test of its public utility. There are some ways of making money, e.g., the promotion of lotteries or gambling, which the State definitely forbids. The same principle is implied in the special taxation on lotteries in countries where they are permitted, or on the drink traffic. It is also implied in the State endowment of research or education.

3. While it is true that the power given to individuals by private property tends to efficiency when rightly used, that does not remove the evils produced by the irresponsible power thus acquired with property. It may be the case that as yet no means have been devised which can prevent these evils without also taking away the advantages of private property, and that they are a price which is worth paying. On that point opinions will differ.

Here we have the analogy of the control of political power to encourage us. Indeed, once we realize that property exists mainly as a power, we can see that the problem of the proper regulations of property is only the old political problem of the recognition and control of political power in a vastly more complicated form. The same difficulty of combining the efficiency which is given by the concentration of power with the prevention of its abuse and the insistence that such power shall be used for social and not for anti-social ends, has been realized and to some extent solved, in the political sphere. 372. THE CONTENT OF AMERICAN PROPERTY RIGHTS1

A great part of the 110 billions of American wealth is made up of one form or another of capitalized privilege or of capitalized predation. If, indeed, our computations include all forms and manifestations of private claim and of private property in that to which no individual can make good his private right of enjoyment, it is probably not going too far to assert that two-thirds of the durable property basis of income in the country are nothing else than this capitalization of predation. The market value of these non-social forms of capital is merely the present worth of the right to exact tribute from one's fellows or to plunder one's fellows. I put this fraction at two-thirds admittedly as mere estimate.

Note the facts as reported by the 1904 census: Out of the 107 billions of material wealth, 18 billions are reported as current products

Adapted by permission from H. J. Davenport, "The Extent and Significance of the Unearned Increment," Bulletin of the American Economic Association, Fourth Series, No. 2 (1911), 324-26.