Ownership

“ Nor, indeed, even when property is the instrument used to provide for the future, is such provision dependent upon the maintenance in its entirety of the whole body of rights which accompany ownership to-day. ”

“ So I assert that private ownership, so called, is not a proprietary quality. It extends to and includes only the use; the absolute ownership of all land being, in fact, in the community composed of all individuals. ”

“ It is more than likely that joint-ownership, and not separate ownership, is the really archaic institution, and that the forms of property which will afford us instruction will be those which are associated with the rights of families and of groups of kindred. ”

“ Ownership, in this generic sense, extends to all classes of rights, whether proprietary or personal, in rem or in personam, in re propria or in re aliena. I may own a debt, or a mortgage, or a share in a company, or money in the public funds, or a copyright, or a lease, or a right of way, or the fee simple of land. Every right is owned; and nothing can be owned except a right. Every man is the owner of the rights which are his. ”

“ If two persons carry on a partnership, or own and manage property in common, complications arise, with which nevertheless the law can deal without calling in the aid of fresh conceptions. But what if there are fifty or a hundred joint owners? With such a state of facts legal principles and conceptions based on the type of individual ownership are scarcely competent to deal. How shall this multitude manage its common interests and affairs? ”

“ It says that the ownership of property is the material foundation of human wellbeing, and that this natural right of ownership is sacred, after the manner in which individual life, and more especially national life, is sacred. ”

“ Over against all the ownership rights which do and should accrue to such manager, social responsibilities on the part of the management arise and develop with every stage in the progress of the business. These responsibilities are obligations to coöperators in the business, and to the society more remotely affected by the business. These obligations fix the ethical limits of ownership, and define the duties incumbent on proprietorship. ”

“ We can now acquire landed property from the government, and this creates the most absolute ownership that can exist; but here again comes the question whether governments can do what is impossible to individuals? ”

“ It is not merely that the ownership of any substantial share in the national wealth is concentrated to-day in the hands of a few hundred thousand families, and that at the end of an age which began with an affirmation of the rights of property, proprietary rights are, in fact, far from being widely distributed. ”

“ The kinds and quantities of goods and opportunities which any man can appropriate without admitting other men to some sort of partnership are limited indeed, and the point upon which I am insisting is that so soon as this partnership is entered into, whether for consumption or for production, absolute ownership ends, and a new relation with new ethical limitations begins, viz., the relation which I designate as proprietorship. ”

“ Therefore, in the course of my story of Amalgamated will come a few kindergarten pictures of how the necessaries and luxuries of the people are "incorporated"; of how the evidences of corporation ownership are manufactured; of the [xii] individuals who "manufacture" them; of the individuals who control and make or unmake their values; of the meeting-place of these individuals, within and without the stock-exchanges; of some of the corporations and of some of the signs and tokens of corporation ownership ”

“ But as ownership of one fiddle ordinarily creates the presumption that the owner is a performer in some one of the three degrees of good, bad or indifferent, the ownership of two would seem to be conclusive of the fact. ”

“ Another important class of cases in which a private person may create incorporeal ownership, is where an owner of things grants to another person an authority to transfer the title to them, or to use and enjoy them. ”

“ Co-ownership and ownership by corporations.
It apparently attributes the ownership of land to communities. It contrasts communities with individuals. In so doing it seems to hint, and yet to be afraid of saying, that land was owned by corporations before it was owned by men. The hesitation we can understand. ”

“ Shall we place the ownership in the thirteen holders of the arable strips into which the four hides were divided, or in a corporation whereof they were the members, or in their various lords, those eight exalted persons to whom they were commended, or shall we say that here is res nullius? The supposition that the lords are owners of the waste we may briefly dismiss. The landholders are free to ‘withdraw themselves’ and seek other lords. That the land is res nullius we may also positively deny, if thereby be meant that it lies open to occupation. ”

“ Ownership, as a particular kind of right, must be clearly distinguished from ownership, as a particular kind of relation to rights of all descriptions. We cannot class together the right of ownership and the ownership of a right. ”

“ Therefore if, in accordance with the popular theory, we attribute the ownership of lands to ‘communities,’ we ought to add that we do not attribute it to corporations and that we are fully aware that co-ownership can not be sharply contrasted with ownership by individuals. ”

“ It is the common property of all until it passes into [45] individual ownership, to be used for agricultural or other purposes, under fixed rules, a specific proportion of the product, or its equivalent, being turned into the common treasury, to prosecute public improvements and for other public purposes. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Let it be conceded that the ownership of property includes the right to use; plainly we think, as use and ownership are distinguished one from the other in the provision, the word 'use,' as there employed, means more than the mere privilege of using which the owner enjoys, and relates to its primary signification, as defined by Webster: 'The act of employing anything or of applying it to one's service ”

“ Ownership.—The importance of wants and exertion emphasizes the importance of the individual self in all ideas of wealth. The ownership of one's own abilities and their products is absolutely essential to his care for accumulation, and that care is in proportion to his security in such ownership. ”

“ The language is general, so general that it includes everything, not excepting good will, dividend-earning power, and the like, for they are 'capable of private ownership.' They belong to the corporation. There is no good will in a share of stock over and above the good will which belongs to the corporation, and, if the corporation sells and conveys all that it possesses 'capable of private ownership,' it sells and conveys its good will, and there is nothing left of good will or anything else belonging to the stockholders. ”

“ It is in fact what ownership is in right. Possession is the de facto exercise of a claim; ownership is the de jure recognition of one. A thing is owned by me when my claim to it is maintained by the will of the state as expressed in the law; it is possessed by me, when my claim to it is 265maintained by my own self-assertive will. Ownership is the guarantee of the law; possession is the guarantee of the facts. It is well to have both forms of security if possible ”

“ Ownership established by force does not stand on the same footing as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. ”

“ Why should the ownership of a bushel of wheat, a piece of silk goods, a watch, or a handkerchief in the possession of an American carried or sent to England, or brought thence to this country, be absolute and unlimited, while the ownership of his own products as an author or as a purchaser from an author is made dependent on his nationality? ”

“ Either the owner keeps the profit of the undertaking and bears the loss, or some division of profit and loss between the owner and the manager is the condition of the arrangement between the two parties. Ownership is not abdicated: nor is it easy to see how, without a clear recognition of ownership, any system of delegation could arise. ”

“ The Roman Institutional Treatises, after giving their definition of the various forms and modifications of ownership, proceed to discuss the Natural Modes of Acquiring Property. Those who are unfamiliar with the history of jurisprudence are not likely to look upon these "natural modes" of acquisition as possessing, at first sight, either much speculative or much practical interest. ”

“ The scope given to the right of ownership in later modern times is an outgrowth of the exigencies of mercantile traffic, of the prevalence of purchase and sale in a "money economy." The habits of thought enforced by these exigencies and by the ubiquitous and ever recurring resort to purchase and sale decide that ownership must naturally, normally, be absolute ownership, with free and unqualified discretion in the use and disposal of the things owned. ”

“ In order to show, therefore, the invalidity of the presumptions by which the institutions of bequest and inheritance are buttressed, I call up the perception that ownership of the managerial functions which are essential to the administration of capitalistic enterprise is a concession by society, for which there is plain historical ground, but that ground is not sufficient to justify recognition of such ownership as a natural right. ”

“ In the case of a sole corporation, as a parson of a church, when he dies or resigns, though there is no actual owner of the land till a successor be appointed, yet there is a legal, potential ownership, subsisting in contemplation of law ”

“ The institution (habit of thought) of ownership or property is a conventional fact; and the logic of pecuniary thinking- that is to say, of thinking on matters of ownership - is a working out of the implications of this postulate, this concept of ownership or property. The characteristic habits of thought given by such work are habits of recourse to conventional grounds of finality or validity, to anthropomorphism, to explanations of phenomena in terms of human relation, discretion, authenticity, and choice. ”

“ Now, this is not only the original source from which333 all ideas of exclusive ownership arise—as is evident from the natural tendency of the mind to revert to it when the idea of exclusive ownership is questioned, and the manner in which social relations develop—but it is necessarily the only source. There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself. ”

“ The difference between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which the private owner works. ”

“ Although the word 'owner' has a variety of meanings, and may, under certain circumstances, include an equitable as well as a legal ownership, or even a right of present use and possession, it implies something more than a bare legal title, and we know of no authority for saying that a person in possession of land under a void deed can be regarded as the owner thereof. ”

“ It is enough that the corporation, in complying with the lawful command of the state to part with ownership, is afforded a fair opportunity to realize the value of the land, and that the sale, when required, is to be under conditions reasonably calculated to realize its value at the time of sale. ”

“ The ingenuity of financiers long ago devised methods of grading stock in such a way that the ownership of some carries full control, while that of others does not, that some bear all the risk and are entitled to all the profits, while others are limited in respect to both. All are property, but not all carry proprietary rights of the same degree. ”

“ So, when a certain stage of economic development has been reached, private ownership, by the admission of its defenders, can no longer be tolerated in the only form in which it is free to display the characteristic, and quite genuine, advantages for the sake of which it used to be defended. ”

“ The natural-rights basis of ownership is by this paralogism preserved intact, and the common man is enabled to feel that the business men in the community add to the aggregate wealth at least as much as they acquire a title to; and the successful business men are at least as well persuaded that such is their relation to the aggregate wealth and to the material well-being of the community at large. ”