Property in early societies
3. The institution of private property has evolved under diverse conditions; the question of its origin is not the same as that of its present justification. In early societies individual property rights were not very clearly marked. Every tribe asserted against other tribes, and tried to uphold, by war, its claims upon its customary hunting-grounds; but the claims of the individual hunter and fisher within the tribe did not often come into conflict. Private property at the outset was in personal possessions, ornaments, weapons, utensils, which were very meager in that primitive society where it was the custom "to go calling with a club instead of a card-case." Only later came individual property in land. A few years ago it was generally believed that the organization of the old German tribes was politically an almost perfect democracy, and economically a communism wherein all had equal claims on the land. To-day this opinion is very seriously questioned. It seems probable that the so-called communism was really an oligarchy of the favored, and that the masses lived in subjection, cut off from all but a meager share in the public property.
Origin vs. present justification of property
However that may have been, strong forces within historic times have put an end to the common ownership and tillage of land as it existed among the serfs of Europe. The common tillage of land was shown by experience to be wasteful. Not only did competition tend to bring the economic agents into more efficient hands, but the movement was furthered by many acts of injustice and violence on the part of those in power. Inquiries into the origin and development of this social institution are interesting and helpful in forming an estimate of its present significance, but the problems of the past are not those of to-day. Whether or not the ancient beginning of property in Europe was in violence and evil has but a remote bearing on the question as to the present working of it. Social conditions and needs have not changed more than have the forms and limits of property itself. Each generation has its own problems to solve, and each must test existing institutions by their present results, ignoring for the most part the evils of the past.
Social expediency the ground of private property
Shifting limits of the law of property
4. Private property may now be justified mainly on the grounds of social expediency. This is a broad explanation under which can be brought the many varying conditions; but it has the fault of a broad explanation, that it needs be further explained. Conceding that private property works hardship to the individual in many cases, it must be justified on the ground that, on the whole, it furthers the progress of society. Private property is looked upon by some as merely reflecting or expressing the economic inequalities of men; the man poor in ability is the man poor in property. It is looked upon by others as exaggerating, indeed at times reversing, the economic abilities of men. In general, it must be judged by this test: Does it further the welfare of society better than would any alternative plan for the control of economic wealth? The question is not whether it is faultless, for no human institution is so. Nor must it be assumed that property is a fixed and uniform mode of control; there are many kinds of property. Different parts of wealth may be treated in different ways: there may be private property in wagons, and public property in roads; private property in houses, and public property in forests; private property in automobiles, and, in some countries, public property in railway-carriages. But any rule of property, like any other workable human law, must be applicable to all individuals that meet the conditions. Hence any human institution must be judged by its average working, not by exceptional cases.
The very acceptance of the theory of social expediency implies the need of a readjustment of the institution of private property; for private property, as it is found to-day, is complicated by many historical accidents. Survivals of ancient injustice and relics of feudal institutions that rest on no vital reason remain in our new country as well as in the older ones. The limits of property in many respects are determined, not according to the logic of expediency, but by the social inertia which often governs succeeding generations.