Society has already gone a long way along the line of giving an equal share in education. It is moving rapidly toward broader conceptions of education for all occupations—farming, mechanics, arts, trade, business—as well as for the "learned professions." It is making a beginning toward giving children (see the Report of the New York Tenement House Commission) a chance to be born and grow up with at least a living minimum of light and air. Libraries and dispensaries and public health officials are bringing the science and literature of the world in increasing measure into the lives of all. When by the better organization of the courts the poor man has real, and not merely formal equality before the law, and thereby justice itself is made more accessible to all, another long step will be taken toward a juster order. How far society can go is yet to be solved. But is it not at least a working hypothesis for experiment, that society should try to give to all its members the gains due to the social progress of the past? How far the maxim of equal opportunity will logically lead it is impossible to say. Fortunately, the moral problem is to work out new ideals, not merely to administer old ones. Other possibilities of larger justice are noticed under § 8 below.
§ 7. OWNERSHIP AND USE OF PROPERTY
The public wealth may be controlled and used in four ways: It may be (1) Privately owned and used; (2) Privately owned and publicly used; (3) Publicly held, but privately used; (4) Publicly held and commonly used. The individualist would have all wealth, or as much as possible, under one of the first two forms. The tendency in the United States until very recently has been to divest the public of all ownership. The socialist, while favoring private ownership and use of the more strictly personal articles, favors the public holding of much which is now privately owned—notably the land, or the instruments of production—as versus the holding of these by private or corporate persons. Or, again, it may be maintained that while individuals should be allowed to accumulate as much property as they can, they should not be allowed to transmit it entirely to their heirs.
Value of Private Property.—The individualist may properly point to the psychological and historical significance of private property, which has been stated in a preceding chapter (p. 490). He may say that the evils there mentioned as attendant upon private property do not belong to the property in itself, but to the exaggerated love of it. He may admit that the present emphasis of attention upon the ownership of wealth, rather than upon intellectual or æsthetic or social interests, is not the highest type of human endeavor. But he urges that the positive values of property are such that the present policy of placing no check upon property should be maintained. In addition to the indirect social value through the power and freedom given to its owners, it may be claimed that the countless educational, charitable, and philanthropic agencies sustained by voluntary gifts from private property, are both the best method of accomplishing certain socially valuable work, and have an important reflex value in promoting the active social interest of those who carry them on. Nor is the force of this entirely broken by the counter claim that this would justify keeping half the population in poverty in order to give the other half the satisfaction of charity. No system short of absolute communism can abolish the need of friendly help.
Defects and Dangers in the Present System.—The first question which arises is: If property is so valuable morally, how many are profiting by it under the present system, and how many are without its beneficent effects? Is the number of property-owners increasing or diminishing? In one of the morally most valuable forms of property, the number of those who profit is certainly decreasing relatively: viz., in the owning of homes. The building of private residences has practically ceased in New York and many other cities except for the very rich. With the increasing value of land the owning of homes is bound to become more and more rare. Only the large capitalist can put up the apartment house. In the ownership of shops and industries the number of owners has relatively decreased, that of clerks has increased. The wage-workers in cities are largely propertyless. The management of industries through corporations while theoretically affording opportunity for property has yet, as Judge Grosscup has pointed out forcibly, been such as to discourage the small investor, and to prompt to the consumption of wages as fast as received. The objection to individualism on this ground would then be as before, that it is not individual enough.
An objection of contrary character is that the possession of property releases its owner from any necessity of active effort or service to the public. It may therefore injure character on both its individual and its social side. Probably the absolute number of those who refrain from any social service because of their property is not very large, and it may be questioned whether the particular persons would be socially very valuable under any system if they are now oblivious to all the moral arguments for such activity and service.
A more serious objection to the individualistic policy is the enormous power allowed to the holders of great properties. It has been estimated that a trust fund recently created for two grandchildren will exceed five billion dollars when handed over. It is easily possible that some of the private fortunes now held may, if undisturbed, amount to far more than the above within another generation. Moreover, the power of such a fortune is not limited to its own absolute purchasing value. By the presence of its owners upon directorates of industrial, transportation, banking, and insurance corporations the resources of many other owners are controlled. A pressure may be exerted upon political affairs compared with which actual contributions to campaign funds are of slight importance. The older theory in America was that the injury to the private character of the owners of wealth would negative the possible dangers to the public, since possession of large wealth would lead to relaxation of energy, or even to dissipation. It was assumed that the father acquired the fortune, the son spent it, and thus scattered it among the many, and the grandson began again at the bottom of the ladder. Now that this theory is no longer tenable, society will be obliged to ask how much power may safely be left to any individual.
It must be recognized that the present management of such natural resources as forests under the régime of private property has been extremely wasteful and threatens serious injury to the United States. Individual owners cannot be expected to consider the welfare of the country at large, or of future generations; hence the water power is impaired and the timber supply of the future threatened.
Finally it must be remembered that many of the present evils and inequities in ownership are not due necessarily to a system of private property, but rather to special privileges possessed by classes of individuals. These may be survivals of past conquests of arms as in Europe, or derived by special legislation, or due to a perfectly unconscious attitude of public morals which carries over to a new situation the customs of an early day. Mill's famous indictment of present conditions is not in all respects so applicable to America as to the older countries of Europe, but it has too much truth to be omitted in any ethical consideration.
"If the choice were to be made between communism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices, if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it, as a consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor,—the largest portions to those who have not worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life,—if this, or communism, were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of communism would be but as dust in the balance. But to make the comparison applicable, we must compare communism at its best with the régime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might be made. The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country." (Polit. Econ., Book II., ch. i.)