776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



OTir 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 accumula- 

 tion, the possessor can not amass or dispose of it without confer- 

 ring 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 ma- 

 terial 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 prop- 

 erty 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 in- 

 crease 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 distribu- 

 tion 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 ob- 

 jections, and they have been of all degrees, from Proudhon's cele- 

 brated 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 disap- 



