Equality Page 17

  CHAPTER XVII.

  THE REVOLUTION SAVES PRIVATE PROPERTY FROM MONOPOLY.

  "Really," said her mother, "Edith touched the match to quite a largediscussion when she suggested that you should open the safe for us."

  To which I added that I had learned more that morning about the moralbasis of economic equality and the grounds for the abolition of privateproperty than in my entire previous experience as a citizen of thetwentieth century.

  "The abolition of private property!" exclaimed the doctor. "What is thatyou say?"

  "Of course," I said, "I am quite ready to admit that you havesomething--very much better in its place, but private property you havecertainly abolished--have you not? Is not that what we have been talkingabout?"

  The doctor turned as if for sympathy to the ladies. "And this youngman," he said, "who thinks that we have abolished private property has atthis moment in his pocket a card of credit representing a private annualincome, for strictly personal use, of four thousand dollars, based upon ashare of stock in the wealthiest and soundest corporation in the world,the value of his share, calculating the income on a four-per-cent basis,coming to one hundred thousand dollars."

  I felt a little silly at being convicted so palpably of making athoughtless observation, but the doctor hastened to say that heunderstood perfectly what had been in my mind. I had, no doubt, heard ita hundred times asserted by the wise men of my day that the equalizationof human conditions as to wealth would necessitate destroying theinstitution of private property, and, without having given specialthought to the subject, had naturally assumed that the equalization ofwealth having been effected, private property must have been abolished,according to the prediction.

  "Thanks," I said; "that is it exactly."

  "The Revolution," said the doctor, "abolished private capitalism--that isto say, it put an end to the direction of the industries and commerce ofthe people by irresponsible persons for their own benefit and transferredthat function to the people collectively to be carried on by responsibleagents for the common benefit. The change created an entirely new systemof property holding, but did not either directly or indirectly involveany denial of the right of private property. Quite on the contrary, thechange in system placed the private and personal property rights of everycitizen upon a basis incomparably more solid and secure and extensivethan they ever before had or could have had while private capitalismlasted. Let us analyze the effects of the change of systems and see if itwas not so."

  "Suppose you and a number of other men of your time, all having separateclaims in a mining region, formed a corporation to carry on as one mineyour consolidated properties, would you have any less private propertythan you had when you owned your claims separately? You would havechanged the mode and tenure of your property, but if the arrangement werea wise one that would be wholly to your advantage, would it not?"

  "No doubt."

  "Of course, you could no longer exercise the personal and completecontrol over the consolidated mine which you exercised over your separateclaim. You would have, with your fellow-corporators, to intrust themanagement of the combined property to a board of directors chosen byyourselves, but you would not think that meant a sacrifice of yourprivate property, would you?"

  "Certainly not. That was the form under which a very large part, if notthe largest part, of private property in my day was invested andcontrolled."

  "It appears, then," said the doctor, "that it is not necessary to thefull possession and enjoyment of private property that it should be in aseparate parcel or that the owner should exercise a direct and personalcontrol over it. Now, let us further suppose that instead of intrustingthe management of your consolidated property to private directors more orless rascally, who would be constantly trying to cheat the stockholders,the nation undertook to manage the business for you by agents chosen byand responsible to you; would that be an attack on your propertyinterests?"

  "On the contrary, it would greatly enhance the value of the property. Itwould be as if a government guarantee were obtained for private bonds."

  "Well, that is what the people in the Revolution did with privateproperty. They simply consolidated the property in the country previouslyheld in separate parcels and put the management of the business into thehands of a national agency charged with paying over the dividends to thestockholders for their individual use. So far, surely, it must beadmitted the Revolution did not involve any abolition of privateproperty."

  "That is true," said I, "except in one particular. It is or used to be ausual incident to the ownership of property that it may be disposed of atwill by the owner. The owner of stock in a mine or mill could not indeedsell a piece of the mine or mill, but he could sell his stock in it; butthe citizen now can not dispose of his share in the national concern. Hecan only dispose of the dividend."

  "Certainly," replied the doctor; "but while the power of alienating theprincipal of one's property was a usual incident of ownership in yourtime, it was very far from being a necessary incident or one which wasbeneficial to the owner, for the right of disposing of property involvedthe risk of being dispossessed of it by others. I think there were fewproperty owners in your day who would not very gladly have relinquishedthe right to alienate their property if they could have had it guaranteedindefeasibly to them and their children. So to tie up property by truststhat the beneficiary could not touch the principal was the study of richpeople who desired best to protect their heirs. Take the case of entailedestates as another illustration of this idea. Under that mode of holdingproperty the possessor could not sell it, yet it was considered the mostdesirable sort of property on account of that very fact. The fact yourefer to--that the citizen can not alienate his share in the nationalcorporation which forms the basis of his income--tends in the same way tomake it a more and not a less valuable sort of property. Certainly itsquality as a strictly personal and private sort of property isintensified by the very indefeasibleness with which it is attached to theindividual. It might be said that the reorganization of the propertysystem which we are speaking of amounted to making the United States anentailed estate for the equal benefit of the citizens thereof and theirdescendants forever."

  "You have not yet mentioned" I said, "the most drastic measure of all bywhich the Revolution affected private property, namely, the absoluteequalizing of the amount of property to be held by each. Here was notperhaps any denial of the principle itself of private property, but itwas certainly a prodigious interference with property holders."

  "The distinction is well made. It is of vital importance to a correctapprehension of this subject. History has been full of just suchwholesale readjustments of property interests by spoliation, conquest, orconfiscation. They have been more or less justifiable, but when least sothey were never thought to involve any denial of the idea of privateproperty in itself, for they went right on to reassert it under adifferent form. Less than any previous readjustment of property relationscould the general equalizing of property in the Revolution be called adenial of the right of property. On the precise contrary it was anassertion and vindication of that right on a scale never before dreamedof. Before the Revolution very few of the people had any property at alland no economic provision save from day to day. By the new system allwere assured of a large, equal, and fixed share in the total nationalprincipal and income. Before the Revolution even those who had secured aproperty were likely to have it taken from them or to slip from them by athousand accidents. Even the millionaire had no assurance that hisgrandson might not become a homeless vagabond or his granddaughter beforced to a life of shame. Under the new system the title of everycitizen to his individual fortune became indefeasible, and he could loseit only when the nation became bankrupt. The Revolution, that is to say,instead of denying or abolishing the institution of private property,affirmed it in an incomparably more positive, beneficial, permanent, andgeneral form than had ever been known before.

  "Of course, Julian, it was in the way of human nature quite a matt
er ofcourse that your contemporaries should have cried out against the idea ofa universal right of property as an attack on the principle of property.There was never a prophet or reformer who raised his voice for a purer,more spiritual, and perfect idea of religion whom his contemporaries didnot accuse of seeking to abolish religion; nor ever in political affairsdid any party proclaim a juster, larger, wiser ideal of governmentwithout being accused of seeking to abolish government. So it was quiteaccording to precedent that those who taught the right of all to propertyshould be accused of attacking the right of property. But who, think you,were the true friends and champions of private property? those whoadvocated a system under which one man if clever enough could monopolizethe earth--and a very small number were fast monopolizing it--turning therest of the race into proletarians, or, on the other hand, those whodemanded a system by which all should become property holders on equalterms?"

  "It strikes me," I said, "that as soon as the revolutionary leaderssucceeded in opening the eyes of the people to this view of the matter,my old friends the capitalists must have found their cry about 'thesacred right of property' turned into a most dangerous sort ofboomerang."

  "So they did. Nothing could have better served the ends of theRevolution, as we have seen, than to raise the issue of the right ofproperty. Nothing was so desirable as that the people at large should beled to give a little serious consideration on rational and moral groundsto what that right was as compared with what it ought to be. It was verysoon, then, that the cry of 'the sacred right of property,' first raisedby the rich in the name of the few, was re-echoed with overwhelmingeffect by the disinherited millions in the name of all."