Equites

“ Let him who owns and those who work, receive Their fair division of the profits reaped. The owner gives the land and the machines To work the raw material, yielding gain. Let this be calculated as his toil, And grain, proportionate to such, bestowed, While those, whose labour has produced the grain, Receive their fair share of the profits too. Thus all would have an interest in the work, 37 And feel they laboured not, nor toiled in vain. Strikes and disputes would fade like restless dreams, And Brotherhood would knit the hearts of men. ”

“ Our wealth consists in the guarantee of an equal share in the capital and income of the nation--a guarantee that is personal and can not be taken from us nor given away, being vested in each one at birth, and divested only by death. ”

“ The maxim 'he who seeks equity must do equity' presupposes that equitable, as distinguished from legal, rights, substantive or remedial, have arisen from the subject-matter in favor of each of the parties ”

“ Equite makes it at once our duty and our pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor, without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends, and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of exchange. Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and justice ”

“ I. Equity regards the property of a corporation as held in trust for the payment of the debts of the corporation, and recognizes the right of creditors to pursue it into whosesoever possession it may be transferred, unless it has passed into the hands of a bon a fide purchaser; and the rule is well settled that stockholders are not entitled to any share of the capital stock nor to any dividend of the profits until all the debts of the corporation are paid. ”

“ Is the capital accumulated by the labour and abstinence of all former generations, of no advantage to any but those who have succeeded to the legal ownership of part of it? And have we not inherited a mass of acquired knowledge, both scientific and empirical, due to the sagacity and industry of those who preceded us, the benefits of which are the common wealth of all? Those who are born to the ownership of property have, in addition to these common benefits, a separate inheritance, and to this difference it is right that advertence should be had in regulating taxation. ”

“ The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of money which will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he has given, rather more than less. And this equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the number of men who are willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths, may be ready to forge it; their number does not in one atom's weight affect the question of the equitable payment of the one who does forge it. ”

“ The same idea may be differently presented in this manner.—It is equity, that every individual should sustain just as just as much of the common burden of life as has to be sustained by anybody on his account. Such would be the result if each produced for himself all that he consumed, as in the first case supposed above; and the fact that it is found convenient to exchange labour and the products of labour, does not vary the definition of equity in the least. ”

“ Among the forms which society assumes under the influence of the institution of property, there are, as I have already remarked, two, otherwise of a widely dissimilar character, but resembling in this, that the ownership of the land, the labour, and the capital, is in the same hands. One of these cases is that of slavery, the other is that of peasant proprietors. In the one, the landowner owns the labour, in the other the labourer owns the land. ”

“ The primary division of the produce of human exertion and frugality is, as we have seen, into three shares, wages, profits, and rent; and these shares are portioned out to the persons entitled to them, in the form of money, and by a process of exchange; or rather, the capitalist, with whom in the usual arrangements of society the produce remains, pays in money, to the other two sharers, the market value of their labour and land. ”

“ The concentration of capital in the form of trusts at the same time as it simplifies the task we propose that society shall undertake, viz. the dispossession of the capitalist class, and the administration of all land and instruments of industry as social property, of which all shah be co-heirs and owners. ”

“ For, since the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining what fixes the share of the produce that goes as rent, we ascertain also what fixes the share that is left for wages, where there is no cooperation of capital; and what fixes the joint share that is left for wages and interest, where capital does cooperate in production. ”

“ We live under the dominion of capital, that is to say, of property other than land, or rather, perhaps, of an accumulated, and still accumulating, interest or dividend-bearing essence of all property (which is labour stored up in some material) , 107reconvertible at will, for productive purposes, into land, labour, or anything men have of exchangeable value. This mighty essence of all property is within the reach of us all, in proportion to our respective opportunities and abilities, and the efforts to gain possession of it we choose to make. ”

“ So, we have seen, local society renders two distinct services4208, which, that the expenses of both may be met, require two distinct assessments, one personal and the other real, one levied on everybody and of which the amount is alike for all, and the other levied only on those whose amount is based on what he spends, on the importance of his business, and on the income from his real estate.—In strict equity, the amount of the former should be equal to the average amount of the latter ”

“ The question of equity or inequity in the distribution of wealth presumes the validity of ownership rights on some basis or other, or at least it presumes the validity of some basis on which the claims of ownership may be discussed. Ownership is the major premise of any argument as to the equity of distribution, and it is this major premise that is being forgotten by the classes among whom socialistic sentiment is gaining. ”

“ Each of them adds a certain value to the material which passes through his hands; and this value, the product of his labor, is his property. He sells it, as fast as he creates it, to the proprietor of the building, who pays him for it in food and wages.”
Divide et impera—divide, and you shall command; divide, and you shall grow rich; divide, and you shall deceive men, you shall daze their minds, you shall mock at justice! Separate laborers from each other, perhaps each one’s daily wage exceeds the value of each individual’s product ”

“ The precepts of the seventh class are the civil laws enumerated in the Section on Judgments, and part of the Section on Property. The object of these precepts is obvious. They define the ways of equity in the various transactions which must take place between man and man. Those that are engaged in such transactions must mutually promote each other’s interests; neither of the parties must strive to increase only his own profit, and that he alone should enjoy the whole benefit of the transaction. ”

“ He starts with the proposition—"That the essential element of beneficent commerce is Equity, or that which is just and equal between man and man." He then proceeds:—"The fundamental inquiry, therefore, upon the answer to which alone a science of commerce can be erected, is the true measure of equity, or, what is the same thing, the measure of price in the exchange of labour and commodities. ”

“ According to the usual legal phraseology, the difference between legal and equitable assets is this; “legal assets are such as constitute the fund for the payment of debts, according to their legal priority; whereas, equitable assets [Pg 24] are those which can be reached only by the aid of a court of equity, and are subject to distribution on equitable principles, according to which, as equity favours equality, they are to be divided pari passu among all the creditors.” ”

“ It can as easily become the master of the industry applied to the earth, as of that applied to the products of the earth. The portion of a nation subject to supply the income of a paper capital, is not in fact in a state of society. Union or association implies equality, But what equality exists between infliction and suffering, between extortion and payment? Can a society or association be formed of a party of matters and a party of slaves? ”

“ And so, if I use my own capital in directly aiding production, as by machinery, or in indirectly aiding production, in exchange, I receive a special and distinguishable advantage from the reproductive character of capital, which is as real, though perhaps not as clear, as though I had lent my capital to another and he had paid me interest. ”

“ And the form of coöperation distinctive of the industrial state which thus arises fosters the feelings and thoughts appropriate to popular power. In daily usage there is a balancing of claims; and the conception of equity is, generation after generation, made clearer. The relations between employer and employed, and between buyer and seller, can be maintained only on condition that the obligations on either side are fulfilled. Where they are not fulfilled the relation lapses, and leaves outstanding those relations in which they are fulfilled. ”

“ It is equally true, that the money-proprietor must view, with the same indifference, his property giving life to this or that branch of industry or agriculture, provided, that in the hour of need or fancy, he finds at hand, on the most equitable terms, the greatest quantity and variety of the best products of agriculture and industry, which the interest of his money, or the amount of the salaries he enjoys, gives him a right to expect. ”

“ Each contributor to a common fund becomes interested in the fund in proportion to his contribution. Each owner of property intermingled with other property of the same kind and value, and stored in a common mass, becomes the owner as tenant in common of an interest in the mass proportionate to his contribution. If loss occurs while the common ownership continues, each owner must sustain his proportionate share. ”

“ The use of the labour note is not strictly a principle of equity, but partakes more of the nature of a contrivance than any other feature of the system of equitable commerce; but yet it seems to be a necessary instrument to be employed in the practical working of the system. The theory of equity is complete without it, but the necessity for its use arises from the practical fact that exchanges cannot in every case be completed on the spot. Hence a circulating medium of some sort is indispensable ”

“ You observe that in this very meritoriously clear sentence both the possessor of the land and the possessor [10] of the capital are assumed to be absolutely idle persons. If they contributed any labour to the business, and so confused themselves with the labourer, the problem of triple division would become complicated directly;—in point of fact, they do occasionally employ themselves somewhat, and become deserving, therefore, of a share, not of rent only, nor of profit only, but of wages also. ”

“ Like recht and droit it passed from the sense of justice in itself to that of the rules in accordance with which justice is administered.
4. Fourthly and lastly we have to notice a legal and technical use of the term equity, as meaning any claim or advantage recognised or conferred by a rule of equity, just as a right signifies any claim or advantage derived from a rule of right. An equity is an equitable, as opposed to a legal right. “When the equities are equal,” so runs the maxim of Chancery, “the law prevails.” So a debt is assignable “subject to equities.” ”

“ In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is entitled to the largest share; and if it is refused him, he very naturally takes it by force. From this to the assumption of the right of property in all things, it is but one step. ”

“ While workmen think themselves justified in combining to sell their labor only on certain terms, but think masters not justified in combining to buy only on certain terms, they show a conception of equity not high enough to make practicable a form of coöperation requiring that each shall recognize the claims of others as fully as his own. ”

“ Each has had some portion of the wealth produced, though the distribution may have taken place in different countries, under different laws and customs, through a period of months or years. This distribution involves the whole question of industrial freedom, and rests finally upon the principle of equity as applied to ownership of one's powers and the product of those powers. It also involves, to a certain extent, the decision of what is properly wealth and what is properly a part of universal welfare. ”

“ In a word, what the company says is income shall be income, and what it says is capital shall be capital.' 'In most if not in all cases, the inquiry as to the time when the profits were earned by the company is an immaterial one as between the tenant for life and remainder-man. ”

“ If, then, the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights, refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can enjoy nothing.
Labor leads us to equality. ”