IT is chiefly the laws of property which have enabled the few to accumulate vast wealth while the masses live in poverty. For many generations our laws have been framed with a view to the claims of property rather than the rights of man. For ages the money power has controlled legislation the world over, and, I am sorry to say, has exercised a controlling influence in our own land for many years. In the language of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If a man has an inalienable right to life, then he has a right to the means which sustain life, and of which he cannot be justly deprived by laws which permit one man, or set of men, to so absorb the means of life as not to leave sufficient to sustain the lives of all. If man has an inalienable right to liberty, then he cannot be justly deprived of liberty by another who assumes the right at his mere discretion to abridge it. If man has an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, then he cannot be justly deprived of that right by laws interposed in the way of its pursuit.
Do such laws exist, and if so, how came they into existence?
In Great Britain, whence we have derived most of our laws of property, the policy is to build up great estates. Hence, by the laws of that country, land descends to the eldest son, to the exclusion of the other children. The effect of this is to limit the ownership of land to a few persons. Thirty-four persons in that country own six million two hundred and eleven thousand acres of land. The Duke of Sutherland is said to own one million three hundred and fifty-eight thousand acres, and a few other dukes and earls own a great proportion of the land of the United Kingdom. What has brought about this wide difference in the ownership of land? Certainly the few who own the millions of acres, from which they derive revenue, in some instances of more than five hundred thousand dollars annually, in rentals, have not earned these vast estates by their own industry, but, on the contrary, it is by force of statutory enactments that these vast estates have been accumulated and perpetuated in few hands.
In this country we have abolished the law of primogeniture, by which the eldest son inherited the landed estate of his ancestor, but here vast estates are being rapidly accumulated in few hands, and this is especially true during and since the War of the Rebellion. In 1860 there were few millionaires and few large fortunes in this country, but since then a rich class has sprung up, so that in 1890, according to reliable statistics, ten per cent. of the people own as much wealth as the other ninety per cent. In 1890 there were 12,690,182 families in the United States, and according to George K. Holmes, in the Political Science Quarterly, 4,047 of these possessed about seven-tenths as much as do 11,593,887 families. Just think of it. One family possessing the wealth of 2,000 families the country over! In the city of New York alone there are said to be five men whose aggregate wealth exceeds $500,000,000. How many hundred millions are held by various wealthy corporations, coal and oil syndicates and other trusts, I am unable to state. In the cities of New York and Chicago hundreds of thousands of men and women, willing to work, were out of employment last winter, many of whom must have perished from want but for charity’s aid. These conditions another winter promise to be no better.
The richest corporations and persons on earth are probably in the United States. How have they accumulated their vast fortunes? Surely not by their own industry and thrift, but by the aid of statutes regulating the rights of property, generally statutes providing for the transmission of property by descent or by will, or the creation of monopolies.
It is only by virtue of statutory law that man is permitted to make disposition of his property by will, and it is only by virtue of statutory law that one person is permitted to inherit property from another, and it is by virtue of statute law that great corporate monopolies have been built up.
No man has a natural right to dispose of property after death, nor has one person a natural right to inherit property from another. As Blackstone says: “There is no foundation in nature or in natural law why the son should have the right to exclude his fellow creatures from a determinate spot of land because his father did so before him, or why the occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when lying on his death-bed, and no longer able to maintain possession, should be able to tell the rest of the world which of them should enjoy it after him.”
Under Illinois laws, the owner of real estate is permitted to lease it for an indefinite period, and compel future generations who occupy the premises to pay rent to unborn generations. Leases for ninety-nine years are quite common in Chicago. It is by no divine law that the occupant of land to-day is allowed to compel its occupant one hundred years hence to pay tribute for its use. The statutes of Illinois have given to the owner of property the right to dispose of it by will, not wholly, but to a certain extent. If married, neither the husband nor wife can give away the homestead or dower rights of the other, nor can creditors, heirs or devisees take from the widow her allowance.
The money power has governed legislation in all civilized countries for generations. It matters not what party is in power in the national or State governments of our own country, the money power has exercised a controlling influence in many instances in the shaping and administration of our laws.
If the accumulation of vast fortunes goes on another generation with the same accelerated rapidity as during the present, the wealth of this country will soon be consolidated in the hands of a few corporations and individuals to as great an extent as the landed interests of Great Britain now are.