CHAPTER XI.
LIFE THE BASIS OF THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY.
Among the pieces of furniture in the subterranean bedchamber where Dr.Leete had found me sleeping was one of the strong boxes of iron cunninglylocked which in my time were used for the storage of money and valuables.The location of this chamber so far underground, its solid stoneconstruction and heavy doors, had not only made it impervious to noisebut equally proof against thieves, and its very existence being,moreover, a secret, I had thought that no place could be safer forkeeping the evidences of my wealth.
Edith had been very curious about the safe, which was the name we gave tothese strong boxes, and several times when we were visiting the vault hadexpressed a lively desire to see what was inside. I had proposed to openit for her, but she had suggested that, as her father and mother would beas much interested in the process as herself, it would be best topostpone the treat till all should be present.
As we sat at breakfast the day after the experiences narrated in theprevious chapters, she asked why that morning would not be a good time toshow the inside of the safe, and everybody agreed that there could be nobetter.
"What is in the safe?" asked Edith's mother.
"When I last locked it in the year 1887," I replied, "there were in itsecurities and evidences of value of various sorts representing somethinglike a million dollars. When we open it this morning we shall find,thanks to the great Revolution, a fine collection of waste paper.--Iwonder, by the way, doctor, just what your judges would say if I were totake those securities to them and make a formal demand to be reinstatedin the possessions which they represented? Suppose I said: 'Your Honors,these properties were once mine and I have never voluntarily parted withthem. Why are they not mine now, and why should they not be returned tome?' You understand, of course, that I have no desire to start a revoltagainst the present order, which I am very ready to admit is much betterthan the old arrangements, but I am quite curious to know just what thejudges would reply to such a demand, provided they consented to entertainit seriously. I suppose they would laugh me out of court. Still, I thinkI might argue with some plausibility that, seeing I was not present whenthe Revolution divested us capitalists of our wealth, I am at leastentitled to a courteous explanation of the grounds on which that coursewas justified at the time. I do not want my million back, even if it werepossible to return it, but as a matter of rational satisfaction I shouldlike to know on just what plea it was appropriated and is retained by thecommunity."
"Really Julian," said the doctor, "it would be an excellent idea if youwere to do just what you have suggested--that is, bring a formal suitagainst the nation for reinstatement in your former property. It wouldarouse the liveliest popular interest and stimulate a discussion of theethical basis of our economic equality that would be of great educationalvalue to the community. You see the present order has been so longestablished that it does not often occur to anybody except historiansthat there ever was any other. It would be a good thing for the people tohave their minds stirred up on the subject and be compelled to do somefundamental thinking as to the merits of the differences between the oldand the new order and the reasons for the present system. Confronting thecourt with those securities in your hand, you would make a fine dramaticsituation. It would be the nineteenth century challenging the twentieth,the old civilization, demanding an accounting of the new. The judges, youmay be sure, would treat you with the greatest consideration. They wouldat once admit your rights under the peculiar circumstances to have thewhole question of wealth distribution and the rights of property reopenedfrom the beginning, and be ready to discuss it in the broadest spirit."
"No doubt," I answered, "but it is just an illustration, I suppose, ofthe lack of unselfish public spirit among my contemporaries that I do notfeel disposed to make myself a spectacle even in the cause of education.Besides, what is the need? You can tell me as well as the judges couldwhat the answer would be, and as it is the answer I want and not theproperty that will do just as well."
"No doubt," said the doctor, "I could give you the general line ofreasoning they would follow."
"Very well. Let us suppose, then, that you are the court. On what groundwould you refuse to return me my million, for I assume that you wouldrefuse?"
"Of course it would be the same ground," replied the doctor, "that thenation proceeded upon in nationalizing the property which that samemillion represented at the time of the great Revolution."
"I suppose so; that is what I want to get at. What is that ground?"
"The court would say that to allow any person to withdraw or withholdfrom the public administration for the common use any larger portion ofcapital than the equal portion allotted to all for personal use andconsumption would in so far impair the ability of society to perform itsfirst duty to its members."
"What is this first duty of society to its members, which would beinterfered with by allowing particular citizens to appropriate more thanan equal proportion of the capital of the country?"
"The duty of safeguarding the first and highest right of its members--theright of life."
"But how is the duty of society to safeguard the lives of its membersinterfered with when one person, has more capital than another?"
"Simply," answered the doctor, "because people have to eat in order tolive, also to be clothed and to consume a mass of necessary and desirablethings, the sum of which constitutes what we call wealth or capital. Now,if the supply of these things was always unlimited, as is the air we needto breathe, it would not be necessary to see that each one had his share,but the supply of wealth being, in fact, at any one time limited, itfollows that if some have a disproportionate share, the rest will nothave enough and may be left with nothing, as was indeed the case ofmillions all over the world until the great Revolution establishedeconomic equality. If, then, the first right of the citizen is protectionto life and the first duty of society is to furnish it, the state mustevidently see to it that the means of life are not unduly appropriated byparticular individuals, but are distributed so as to meet the needs ofall. Moreover, in order to secure the means of life to all, it is notmerely necessary that the state should see that the wealth available forconsumption is properly distributed at any given time; for, although allmight in that case fare well for to-day, tomorrow all might starveunless, meanwhile, new wealth were being produced. The duty of society toguarantee the life of the citizen implies, therefore, not merely theequal distribution of wealth for consumption, but its employment ascapital to the best possible advantage for all in the production of morewealth. In both ways, therefore, you will readily see that society wouldfail in its first and greatest function in proportion as it were topermit individuals beyond the equal allotment to withdraw wealth, whetherfor consumption or employment as capital, from the public administrationin the common interest."
"The modern ethics of ownership is rather startlingly simple to arepresentative of the nineteenth century," I observed. "Would not thejudges even ask me by what right or title of ownership I claimed mywealth?"
"Certainly not. It is impossible that you or any one could have so stronga title to material things as the least of your fellow-citizens have totheir lives, or could make so strong a plea for the use of the collectivepower to enforce your right to things as they could make that thecollective power should enforce their right to life against your right tothings at whatever point the two claims might directly or indirectlyconflict. The effect of the disproportionate possession of the wealth ofa community by some of its members to curtail and threaten the living ofthe rest is not in any way affected by the means by which that wealth wasobtained. The means may have constituted, as in past times they often didby their iniquity, an added injury to the community; but the fact of thedisproportion, however resulting, was a continuing injury, without regardto its beginnings. Our ethics of wealth is indeed, as you say, extremelysimple. It consists merely in the law of self-preservation, asserted inthe name of all against the encroachments of any.
It rests upon aprinciple which a child can understand as well as a philosopher, andwhich no philosopher ever attempted to refute--namely, the supreme rightof all to live, and consequently to insist that society shall be soorganized as to secure that right.
"But, after all," said the doctor, "what is there in our economicapplication of this principle which need impress a man of your time withany other sensation than one of surprise that it was not earlier made?Since what you were wont to call modern civilization existed, it has beena principle subscribed to by all governments and peoples that it is thefirst and supreme duty of the state to protect the lives of the citizens.For the purpose of doing this the police, the courts, the army, and thegreater part of the machinery of governments has existed. You went so faras to hold that a state which did not at any cost and to the utmost ofits resources safeguard the lives of its citizens forfeited all claim totheir allegiance.
"But while professing this principle so broadly in words, you completelyignored in practice half and vastly the greater half of its meaning. Youwholly overlooked and disregarded the peril to which life is exposed onthe economic side--the hunger, cold, and thirst side. You went on thetheory that it was only by club, knife, bullet, poison, or some otherform of physical violence that life could be endangered, as if hunger,cold, and thirst--in a word, economic want--were not a far more constantand more deadly foe to existence than all the forms of violence together.You overlooked the plain fact that anybody who by any means, howeverindirect or remote, took away or curtailed one's means of subsistenceattacked his life quite as dangerously as it could be done with knife orbullet--more so, indeed, seeing that against direct attack he would havea better chance of defending himself. You failed to consider that noamount of police, judicial, and military protection would prevent onefrom perishing miserably if he had not enough to eat and wear."
"We went on the theory," I said, "that it was not well for the state tointervene to do for the individual or to help him to do what he was ableto do for himself. We held that the collective organization should onlybe appealed to when the power of the individual was manifestly unequal tothe task of self-defense."
"It was not so bad a theory if you had lived up to it," said the doctor,"although the modern theory is far more rational that whatever can bedone better by collective than individual action ought to be soundertaken, even if it could, after a more imperfect fashion, beindividually accomplished. But don't you think that under the economicconditions which prevailed in America at the end of the nineteenthcentury, not to speak of Europe, the average man armed with a goodrevolver would have found the task of protecting himself and familyagainst violence a far easier one than that of protecting them againstwant? Were not the odds against him far greater in the latter strugglethan they could have been, if he were a tolerably good shot, in theformer? Why, then, according to your own maxim, was the collective forceof society devoted without stint to safeguarding him against violence,which he could have done for himself fairly well, while he was left tostruggle against hopeless odds for the means of a decent existence? Whathour, of what day of what year ever passed in which the number of deaths,and the physical and moral anguish resulting from the anarchy of theeconomic struggle and the crushing odds against the poor, did notoutweigh as a hundred to one that same hour's record of death orsuffering resulting from violence? Far better would society havefulfilled its recognized duty of safeguarding the lives of its membersif, repealing every criminal law and dismissing every judge andpoliceman, it had left men to protect themselves as best they mightagainst physical violence, while establishing in place of the machineryof criminal justice a system of economic administration whereby all wouldhave been guaranteed against want. If, indeed, it had but substitutedthis collective economic organization for the criminal and judicialsystem it presently would have had as little need of the latter as we do,for most of the crimes that plagued you were direct or indirectconsequences of your unjust economic conditions, and would havedisappeared with them.
"But excuse my vehemence. Remember that I am arraigning your civilizationand not you. What I wanted to bring out is that the principle that thefirst duty of society is to safeguard the lives of its members was asfully admitted by your world as by ours, and that in failing to give theprinciple an economic as well as police, judicial, and militaryinterpretation, your world convicted itself of an inconsistency asglaring in logic as it was cruel in consequences. We, on the other hand,in assuming as a nation the responsibility of safeguarding the lives ofthe people on the economic side, have merely, for the first time,honestly carried out a principle as old as the civilized state."
"That is clear enough," I said. "Any one, on the mere statement of thecase, would of course be bound to admit that the recognized duty of thestate to guarantee the life of the citizen against the action of hisfellows does logically involve responsibility to protect him frominfluences attacking the economic basis of life quite as much as fromdirect forcible assaults. The more advanced governments of my day, bytheir poor laws and pauper systems, in a dim way admitted thisresponsibility, although the kind of provision they made for theeconomically unfortunate was so meager and accompanied with suchconditions of ignominy that men would ordinarily rather die than acceptit. But grant that the sort of recognition we gave of the right of thecitizen to be guaranteed a subsistence was a mockery more brutal than itstotal denial would have been, and that a far larger interpretation of itsduty in this respect was incumbent on the state, yet how does itlogically follow that society is bound to guarantee or the citizen todemand an absolute economic equality?"
"It is very true, as you say," answered the doctor, "that the duty ofsociety to guarantee every member the economic basis of his life might beafter some fashion discharged short of establishing economic equality.Just so in your day might the duty of the state to safeguard the lives ofcitizens from physical violence have been discharged after a nominalfashion if it had contented itself with preventing outright murders,while leaving the people to suffer from one another's wantonness allmanner of violence not directly deadly; but tell me, Julian, weregovernments in your day content with so construing the limit of theirduty to protect citizens from violence, or would the citizens have beencontent with such a limitation?"
"Of course not."
"A government which in your day," continued the doctor, "had limited itsundertaking to protect citizens from violence to merely preventingmurders would not have lasted a day. There were no people so barbarous asto have tolerated it. In fact, not only did all civilized governmentsundertake to protect citizens from assaults against their lives, but fromany and every sort of physical assault and offense, however petty. Notonly might not a man so much as lay a finger on another in anger, but ifhe only wagged his tongue against him maliciously he was laid by theheels in jail. The law undertook to protect men in their dignity as wellas in their mere bodily integrity, rightly recognizing that to beinsulted or spit upon is as great a grievance as any assault upon lifeitself.
"Now, in undertaking to secure the citizen in his right to life on theeconomic side, we do but studiously follow your precedents insafeguarding him from direct assault. If we did but secure his economicbasis so far as to avert death by direct effect of hunger and cold asyour pauper laws made a pretense of doing, we should be like a State inyour day which forbade outright murder but permitted every kind ofassault that fell short of it. Distress and deprivation resulting fromeconomic want falling short of actual starvation precisely correspond tothe acts of minor violence against which your State protected citizens ascarefully as against murder. The right of the citizen to have his lifesecured him on the economic side can not therefore be satisfied by anyprovision for bare subsistence, or by anything less than the means forthe fullest supply of every need which it is in the power of the nationby the thriftiest stewardship of the national resources to provide forall.
"That is to say, in extending the reign of law and public justice to theprotection and security of men's interests on the economi
c side, we havemerely followed, as we were reasonably bound to follow, your much-vauntedmaxim of 'equality before the law.' That maxim meant that in so far associety collectively undertook any governmental function, it must actabsolutely without respect of persons for the equal benefit of all.Unless, therefore, we were to reject the principle of 'equality beforethe law,' it was impossible that society, having assumed charge of theproduction and distribution of wealth as a collective function, coulddischarge it on any other principle than equality."
"If the court please," I said, "I should like to be permitted at thispoint to discontinue and withdraw my suit for the restoration of myformer property. In my day we used to hold on to all we had and fight forall we could get with a good stomach, for our rivals were as selfish aswe, and represented no higher right or larger view. But this modernsocial system with its public stewardship of all capital for the generalwelfare quite changes the situation. It puts the man who demands morethan his share in the light of a person attacking the livelihood andseeking to impair the welfare of everybody else in the nation. To enjoythat attitude anybody must be a good deal better convinced of the justiceof his title than I ever was even in the old days."