and memory by substantial benefactions with works educational, philanthropic or charitable, for the benefit and welfare of his fellow men.' "There is no absolute ownership in fee simple from the ethical standpoint."2 Private property becomes a public trust. Thus Cecil Rhodes conceived political obligations of wealth. Another South

African millionaire left money for the construction of a railroad. Pedro Alvarado in Mexico proposed to give $50,000,000 toward the payment of the debt of the Mexican Republic, because he took his millions out of the ground. Another rich man says: "The rights and interests of the laboring men will be looked after and cared for not by the agitators but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country." The Lord is usually charged a rather high brokerage by his stewards; but these sentiments indicate an ethical sense. The best example of stewardship at hand is that of Professor S. M. Babcock, of Wisconsin, who declined to take patents on his inventions, which, especially the "Babcock Milk Test," are worth millions annually to the farmers, because he thought as a public servant he ought to give the general public the benefit. The advantage of this sort of stewardship is that it prevents problems as well as contributes to their solution.

3

Although the part of the church in economic affairs has always, perhaps, been that of the conservation of any existing regime, the ethical basis of stewardship is easily found in the words of its leaders. Paul said: "And whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it." He had perhaps been reading Plato: "In a well ordered state the whole of society must feel the pleasures or pains 1 Dillon, in Am. Law Review, xxix, 188. 2 Iles, in Century, March, 1897.

31 Cor. 12: 26.

of each of its members." Aquinas said: "The possession of riches is not unlawful if the order of reason is observed; that is to say that a man possess justly what he owns and that he use it in a proper manner for himself and others." St. Ambrose said: "The earth has been given to us in common. Why, O rich men, do you arrogate property to yourselves alone?" Bossuet said: “O rich men of today, if we go back to the beginning of things we shall find that the poor have not less right than you to the goods you possess.

Aristotle states the principle of distribution: "It is clearly better that property should be private but the use of it common." Sir Frederick Pollock 2 repeats Aristotle: "How to foster and maintain a state of generous friendship in which a man shall give and take in turn of the good things of life so that property shall in effect be several in title but common in use, that is the high social problem which the communist evades and the true statesman must attack."

Law and thought and philanthropy are not ineffectual agents of progress. Hence the certainty of economic transformation by the evolution of property need not preclude expectant opportunism. Universal acquiescence would delay amelioration. One may enter the councils of the doctors of the diseased social body, see the doctors of the old school apply heat to the congestion and ice packs to the head and feet, while administering soperifics. The patent nostrum vendor is fond of bleeding and blisters; the osteopath suggests friction-more competition. The mental science man proposes "economic property "- a mental substitute for actual property, and the faith-cure man cures 2 History of the Science of Politics, p. 23.

1 Politics, ii, 8.

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the patient's desire for cure and makes him prefer death here and fullness of life hereafter. Any social solution is idle that assumes the possibility of a stable equilibrium of inequality, while human desire is a motive and imitation is a method. "The difference between man and man is not so considerable that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he." What do you suppose will satisfy the soul but to walk free and own no superior." Notwithstanding Aristotle's dictum that it is more important to equalize desires than property; notwithstanding the power of poverty to substitute stolidity for the first pain of deprivation; notwithstanding that habit is the great balance wheel of society-desire for economic equality persists as a motive and a force. Conservatism of the fortunate can never quell the desire of the poor, nor redundance diminish the appetite of the rich. As to the solutions just cited, "free and fair competition "is like a fair fight between the new-hatched chicken and the hawk. Competition" as now used by economists is highly diluted with its opposite. The meum of economic property " may be found less satisfying than the cove oysters and caviare of the tuum. The wind-if only the wind of envy-may whistle through the meum of "economic property" while the tuum is purple and fine linen. Nevertheless if the prevision of the doctors runs with destiny their measures may accelerate its operations. It makes little difference in the outcome whether the contribution be one of amelioration or of irritation.

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The complacence of science can accept with equal cheer the sanguineness of socialism or the impotency of individualism. Comte says: "Le profond sentiment des lois qui régissent les divers genres des phenomènes peut seul inspirer une véritable résignation, c'est à dire une disposition. à supporter avec constance et sans espoir des compensations

des maux inévitables." Without being either alarmed or restrained by the possibility or the impossibility of socialism, whether that has to one an ideal or a sinister sound, "the state may realize for society the benefits of monopoly."

1

3

4

A wise opportunism is supported and indeed compelled by the inevitableness of change. The Charleston Courier said: "Ages must roll into the eternity of the past before any general scheme of emancipation can be attempted with the remotest probability of success." 2 Yet the fundamental form of ownership was quickly changed. Gladstone said: "I freely own that compulsory expropriation is a thing which is admissible and even sound in principle." Herbert Spencer said: "So it seems possible that the primitive ownership of land by the community, which with the development of coercive institutions lapsed in large measure or wholly into private ownership, will be revived as industrialism further develops." "It seems reasonable to assume that with each increment in the social product the people will conceive it to be to their advantage to invest added sums in the machinery of government.” 5 "The time will come when men will perceive that it is as monstrous for a father to bequeath to his son a controlling interest in a factory or a railroad as it would be now for the president of the United States to give to his daughter the city of New York as a dowry." Instead the president is proposing a limitation of the size of fortunes.

1 Adams, Relation of the State to Industrial Action, p. 47.

2 Quoted in Von Holst, op. cit., ii, p. 118.

3 Quoted in Bliss's Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 803 Sociology, ii, pp. 643-4.

5 Adams, Finance, p. 39.

Small, Am. Journal of Sociology, Jan., 1896.

The indirect confiscations of the law, the diminution of private ownership by co-operative effort, the concessions of stewardship might conceivably produce a form of estate in which the relation of holders should be one of mutual security and support, instead of, as at present, a gradation of subjections in which the contributions of the less to the greater exceed the contributions of the greater to the less. The signs of equality in such estate are, however, illusory. And it must not be forgotten in this speculation that history is not logic. As one period has been characterized by patria-potestas, one by contract, one by fealty, one by liberty, the approaching period of balanced rights may be one characterized by equality. This "equality," however, like the "liberty" of the past, can be only a word of faith, not of much actuality. This period may prelude one beyond in which fraternity shall succeed liberty and equality as creeds. But this is beyond the prevision of the present moral elevation of society.

If there is to be a rebalancing of ownership in which the sanctions of economic and legal force shall yield in some small degree to the sanction of mutual satisfaction, what shall the new estate be called? Nostrism? Idemism? Quisquism? Quilibetism?" Individualism" in its former sense has passed away, although the satisfaction of the individual is the hope of every ism. "Altruism" is the flower, but not the root of society. "New Feudalism" is not applicable. There is no fealty; the "mesne lord " holds of his vassals. Because in the account of ownership here glimmered forth, contest is more potent than voluntary concession, co-operation is also too good a word. "Militarism," the regimentation of society, is of too narrow implication. Socialism is an alarming word. Mutualism is a "symbiosis in which two organisms living together, mutually and permanently help and support one another." This