Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/796

776 our purpose now to search, for the ethical laws or principles that should govern economic practice.

If there is any one thing that both theory and practice have shown to be of economic advantage to man, it is the existence of private property. So essential is property to social welfare that, as some one has said, "if it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it." If effort were not rewarded with results, if men were deprived of the fruits of their labor, they would soon cease to work. No thriving society exists without personal property, and, no matter how selfish were the motives that induced its accumulation, the possessor can not amass or dispose of it without conferring some benefit on his fellow-men. Where property rights are not secure, you find lack of energy, rapacious usury, and deep misery. Where these rights are-recognized and protected, you have industrial activity in every direction. Men become alert, vigilant, and independent; watchful of their rights, and jealous of their freedom. In their desire to gratify their own wants, which the right of personal property secures to them, they study to supply the wants and desires of others. Thus it becomes the strongest stimulus to production, and the mass and variety of material goods now existing may be said to be the result of this stimulus. Surely no one will question its beneficence.

The earlier economists assumed that the right to private property was a natural right, or primary truth, which needed neither explanation nor defense. This was the general opinion, and, to a great extent, it is still the prevalent opinion. But the great increase in wealth that has occurred, and the lodgment of large masses of it in the hands of a few, coupled with the existence of vast numbers of poor who with difficulty manage to secure just enough to live upon, have brought up the question of the distribution of wealth. As a result, objection has been taken both to the right of private property and to the fact itself. This objection has not been confined to theorists, but large bodies of men, through various schemes of communism or socialism, are endeavoring to either get rid of private property altogether, by making it all common property, or through limiting the right of holding it, by making the state the only possessor of many of its forms.

Ability has not been lacking in the proclamation of these objections, and they have been of all degrees, from Proudhon's celebrated mot that "all property is theft," to George's eloquent plea that the cause of poverty is private ownership of land; but mots are not proofs and eloquence is not always truth. Yet there must be some other explanation for this phenomenon than is to be found in the envy and jealousy of some over the good fortune of others.

The sentiments and feelings of those who find fault with the existing economic order are in part accounted for by their