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Property and Inheritance.
21
taking any part whatever in the administration of
the capital which it represents. Hence the snowball
accumulation of large fortunes is not liable to be
checked by the thawing influence of incompetence,
relative or absolute, in the heir.
Economic Grounds for Inequality.
Now the inequality due to inheritance must be
sharply distinguished from the inequality that results
from differences in the natural capacity and industry
of each generation. The latter has some economic
justification ; large rewards are possibly needed to
induce people to make the effort and sustain the
anxieties which modern industry requires in its
higher direction, and society probably gets more
out of a Henry Ford than it pays him. From this
point of view the Estate Duty figures are a little mis-
leading. They suggest a greater separation of
ownership and use of capital than has actually taken
place ; all joint stock securities may be owned by
persons who take no part in the administration of
the businesses, the capital of which they represent,
but in practice not all are so owned ; in manufacturing
industry, and merchanting in particular, a large part
of the stock is held by the persons in active control—
even in the case of businesses on the scale of the Ford
Company. But this association is severed when
the man who made the business dies. The property
his heirs enjoy is not an incentive to effort on their
part, but rather a discouragement. The economic
grounds on which the right to accumulate property
rests, therefore, afford no justification for the right
to émherit property.
Against this it may be urged that the right to
bequeath, and so to provide for one’s offspring, is an
important element in the inducements that lead great