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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