6 7 z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



own labor are recognized as his." On the island where Mr. Spen- 

 cer lives, we might say that almost from the beginning the prod- 

 uct, and part of the time both producer and product, have been 

 recognized as belonging to the lord of the manor. At present the 

 bulk of the products belong to the lords of the factories — the 

 "captains of industry" — and nobody but the socialist fails to 

 recognize both the fact and its propriety. 



So in the first chapter of Dr. Chapin's recast of Wayland's 

 " Political Economy " we find it stated, as the third of the funda- 

 mental principles of the science, that "the exertion of labor estab- 

 lishes a right of property in the fruits of labor, and the idea of 

 exclusive possession is a necessary consequence." And Mark Hop- 

 kins, in his " Law of Love " (chapter iii), says that " with no right 

 to the product of his labor, no man would make a tool or a gar- 

 ment, or build a shelter, or raise a crop. There could be no indus- 

 try and no progress." 



Now we must accept or reject the theory supported by this 

 formidable and indefinitely extensible array of authority, because 

 it does or does not conform to the facts ; not because it leads to 

 the conclusion that property ought to keep even pace with pro- 

 duction in its development toward communism ; not because it 

 justifies some in opposing property in land on the ground that 

 land is not a product of labor ; not because it leads Prof. Perry 

 and his school into confusion in their effort to prove that property 

 in land is right because the value of land is the product of the 

 labor of its owner. If production confers on the producer the 

 divine or otherwise particularly sacred right of property in the 

 product, I propose to accept the truth as soon as convinced of it, 

 whatever agreeable or disagreeable conclusions it may lead to. I 

 do not know that there is any absolute and infallible criterion of 

 truth or reality. Perhaps " persistence in consciousness " may be 

 one. But, at any rate, I have lived long enough to know that 

 " agreeableness " is not." 



The fact known to everybody is that the vast army of those 

 who work for wages or salaries do not acquire the slightest pro- 

 prietary interest in the particular things with which they " mix 

 their labor." Neither do the transportation companies nor the 

 draymen of the streets. It may be said, in defense of the theory, 

 that their interest is bought off in advance, or that, having sold 

 their labor, it is no longer theirs, but does, in fact, belong to the 

 owner of the product. 



But this is not the statement of the economists and philoso- 

 phers we have quoted, and would slur over the laws by which the 

 rate of pay for salaried services is governed. It is much less con- 

 fusing and more rational to look at the matter as the great ma- 

 jority of people look at it — as all look at it, in fact, until they are 



