The Present Economic System

Each of the five theories has its defects, but each points to some fact important and significant, at certain times and places, in the explanation of this widespread institution. They al,' find some place within a more comprehensive sixth theory, that of social expediency, which will be outlined be low. First, however, let us briefly survey some of the histori cal and legal qualifications of property as it has been and is.

§ 5. Origin vs. justification. The question of the origin is not the same as that of the present justification of the ex isting system of private property. The institution of private property has evolved under diverse conditions. In early so cieties 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 hunters on land 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 in which 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 al most perfect democracy, and economically a communism in which all had equal claims upon the land. To-day this opin ion is very seriously questioned. It seems probable that there was a goodly measure of communism in the control and use of lands (though not in other things), but this was largely con fined to an oligarchy of the favored; whereas the masses lived in subjection, cut off from all but a meager share in the com mon lands. 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 peasants of Europe. That system was shown by experience to be wasteful. Com petition tended to bring the economic agents into more effi cient hands, and 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 any social in stitution 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 re mote 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, ignoring for the most part the evils of the distant past, each generation must test existing in stitutions by their present results.

§ 6.

Limitations of private property. It is well, in dis cussing private property, to rid the mind at once of the idea that it is an absolute and unchanging thing. Few realize the manifold ways in which property rights are limited. Un modified private control of property is unknown; the public makes many reservations in its own interest. There is, first, a whole set of limitations to prevent nuisances. An owner in many situations is not free to build a slaughter-house or to start a glue-factory on his land. Property is governed by general public utility, and anything that threatens to become. a nuisance or a danger may be excluded. Under the right of eminent domain, the state or the railroad may take the old homestead from the owner who would live and die there. Although pecuniary damages are paid to him, this is a limita tion of his property rights. Rights of way on property exist either by contract or by prescription permitting its public use. Most important of all limitations is the right of tax ation, by which society takes more or less of private incomes for purposes of which the individual owners may not approve.

The law enforces a multitude of private claims by some persons against others. A variety of rights called easements or servitudes may attach to private property, modifying its exclusive use. Leases for any period are a limitation of the owner's control. Both the holder of the lease and the owner of the property have certain rights before the law. The lender of money secured by mortgage has a legally recognized and enforceable equity in the mortgaged wealth. Property is left in trust for the benefit of persons or of institutions or of the public, and is administered by trustees who are strictly bound to execute the terms of their instructions. Contracts of many sorts are entered into by owners, limiting their con trol in manifold ways, and the law enforces these contracts. These all form a complex of equitable claims, which together equal in value one undivided property right, which in turn equals the value of the These claims mutually de limit each other (whether they be called equitable claims, or liens, or property rights), and wealth is not multiplied by mu'tiplying the claims, as is unfortunately sometimes assumed to be the case.