Property and Inheritance.
of conducting them ; joint stock was confined to a
relatively small number of statutory corporations
and public utility undertakings, the great bulk of
businesses were conducted personally by their
DWNers.
The common notion of property is that it is an
exclusive right to the use and control of a material
thing. So it was a century ago; but it is so no
longer in its most important categories. The large
owners of to-day can no longer display their pro-
perty by pointing to this thing and that thing and
saying “ This is mine”; the only material evidence
of their rights is a scrap of paper, entitling them to
certain payments. Their rights to these payments
are more absolute and unconditional than the pro-
perty rights of a century ago; ownership does not
necessarily involve any supervisory or administrative
responsibilities ; but the rights are restricted to the
money payment. The owner of £100,000 ordinary
stock of the L.M.S. Railway cannot point to any
section of the line that is his, require a train to stop
at a station at which it is not scheduled to stop, or
interfere with the administration of the company.
The holder of War Loan cannot even indicate the
plant or machinery that yields him his income;
his security is the wealth of the country as a whole
and the Government's constitutional right to tax
that wealth to pay him his dividends.
Separation between Ownership and Use.
The cause of the change is the growth of large
scale industry and the increasing complication of
commercial relations. The old association between
the ownership and use of wealth became impossible
when wealth began to take the form of modern
machinery, ships and railways, and commerce