Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/836

 820 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of this transaction, Earl Grey took up the matter with extraordinary vigor. Not content with organizing a trust company for Northumberland to take over this and other licenses, and manage them for the public benefit, he has created a network of county and other companies already covering almost

every county of England and parts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland

The companies themselves, already formed on a semi-official basis, will no doubt gladly transfer their undertakings to any elected authority authorized by Parliament to accept them. The public spirit which animated the founder, Earl Grey, will assuredly continue to actuate his followers.

The consideration of the above case, and others like it, shows very well that the fundamental difference between public and private ownership is rather one of motive on the one hand, and benefit on the other, than of mere legal definition. For example, if certain money or property, legally and nominally belonging to the public, is really used for the private gain of a political ring, there is no real public ownership. Or again, if money and prop- erty, legally and nominally belonging to some individual, are used for the benefit of the public, they become, at least while so used, public property in a very true sense. No socialist, even, can suppose that at any time all public property will be literally controlled equally by all the citizens; on the contrary, many things, such as machines, wil have to be placed in the hands of experts, who will have special authority concerning them, just exactly as if they owned them in the ordinary sense. This is so far true that public and private ownership may be looked on as not at all incompatible, when ownership is considered to be the power to use, not that to barter away or destroy. 2 From this standpoint, in certain communities, a legally private ownership might be the only means of bringing about a genuine public ownership ; for example, suppose that in a certain city a man had a valuable collection of some sort, which he desired to give to the public, but he knew that the city was controlled at that time by a corrupt ring which would undoubtedly place an incompetent curator in charge, and generally let the collection go to ruin. The wise would-be donor, in such a case, would undoubtedly

should be regarded separately, just as are use-value and exchange-value. In this connection it is interesting to recall that we consider it criminal voluntarily to part with our lives, though they are our own.
 * Use-ownership and exchange-ownership (or use-rights and exchange-rights)