Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day

by Alfred Farthing Robbins

XXXIV.—SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE WITH PROPERTY?

Having dealt with the manner in which the State interferes with labour, which to most is their only property, it is necessary to consider how it deals with capital, which is the fruit of labour, and how it thus interferes with some of what are termed “the rights of property.”

This has been done in order to avoid greater ills, as in the case of the fixing of fair rents by judicial courts in Ireland and certain districts of the Highlands of Scotland; in others to prevent endless dispute and loss, as in the disposal, in specified proportions, of the personal property of those who die without a will; in a further series to prevent a virtual monopoly from becoming tyrannous, as in the compulsion of railway companies to run certain third-class trains, and not to charge beyond a stated fare, or the restriction of the profits of gas companies to 10 per cent. unless a specified reduction in price is made to the consumers; in others, yet, for the supposed advantage of a class, as in the custom of primogeniture, which gives all real property (that is, land) to the eldest son of a father who dies intestate; and, in others, for the presumed benefit of the community, at the expense of individual efforts, as in the limitation of the duration of patents for inventions to seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, and of copyright in books to forty-two years from the date of publication, or for the author’s life and seven years after, whichever of these terms may be the longer.

As to the first three points—the fixing of fair rents in Ireland and the Highlands, the due division of the personal property of those who die without a will, and the limitation of the power of virtual monopolies—there is no need at this day to argue, for all are irrevocable. As to the fourth, there is no practical disagreement among leading politicians on both sides regarding the desirability of doing away with the custom of primogeniture, as enforced by law. But as to the fifth, it may be submitted that the State goes too far or not far enough.

Our legislators have been exceedingly tender towards every description of property except that created by certain of the highest phases of brain-power. If a man invents a machine which may save millions to the community, he loses all specific property in his invention after a given period of years; if he writes a book which may elevate mankind, his family are similarly condemned after a certain period to forfeit all claim upon the fruits of his labour. But if, instead of putting his brain to such uses, he merely makes a machine or lends a book for hire, there is no law to step in and deprive him of the profits if either machine or book lasts a century.

Why this difference? The theory appears to be that the community is entitled to profit after a certain period by the brains of its members, when used in the creative or inventive direction; but if the claim be good, has not the State an equal right to profit after a similar period by the brains of its members when used in trading ways? Why should brains exercised in one direction be handicapped in comparison with those exercised in another? The answer may be that the inventor or author employs no capital, that the trader does, and that, therefore, whatever profit the former is allowed to make is a profit upon nothing, while in the latter case the profit is directly upon the capital employed, which ought not to be interfered with.

But this is to adopt the fallacy that capital is necessarily the same thing as money. The capital of an inventor or an author is his brains, which he expends upon his invention or his book; and the community has exactly the same right to deprive the widow and the orphan of a fortune because it was made by a lucky speculation, for instance, forty-two years before, as of their property in a book because it was published that length of time previous. It is true that the State does not fully exercise this right, and protects the family of the mere money-maker while it despoils that of the brain-worker; but the principle is one which contains larger possibilities than the former have yet realized.

The argument that it is for the benefit of the community that only a certain amount of time should be given to the inventor or the author in which to make a profit is dangerous, because it can so easily be applied to other species of property. Why not to the body of the machine as well as to its principle, why not to the pages of the book as well as to what they contain? And even if it is never pushed so far, there are certain species of property now protected by the law which will not improbably be attacked upon this same ground of “the benefit of the community” before very long; and it is difficult to see how they can be defended as long as the statutes affecting copyright and patents exist.