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