Property interest

“ They did not foresee, these ingenuous legislators, that if property is retainable by intent alone—nudo animo—it carries with it the right to let, to lease, to loan at interest, to profit by exchange, to settle annuities, and to levy a tax on a field which intent reserves, while the body is busy elsewhere. ”

“ Property in persons or things has been a characteristic feature of all civilizations. Property owners, receiving rents, interest, dividends, in proportion to the amount of property which they own are not called upon to make equivalent return in exchange for their property--based income. ”

“ The author says:
"The physical property is that which enables the corporation to do business. Without physical property it could not produce the commodity which it sells. The amount of money actually invested in acquiring that physical property represents the measure of capital on which it is morally entitled to earn interest and profit; and, in the stage of promoting and financing the enterprise, all hope of earnings is based on the amount of money required to construct the property." ”

“ It is improbable that a reasonable profit on the fair value of the property could be construed to mean less than the interest or revenue from a like amount of Government bonds or other non-taxable securities. ”

“ No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without consumption; no consumption without loss of property,—such is the inflexible necessity to which God's judgment compels the proprietor to bend. A curse upon property!
III. The proprietor who, instead of consuming his income, uses it as capital, turns it against production, and thereby makes it impossible for him to exercise his right. For the more he increases the amount of interest to be paid upon it, the more he is compelled to diminish wages. ”

“ A thousand dollars, once invested, is virtually immortal, unless it is stolen, or disposed of in some extra legal way. Depreciation, amortization, insurance and special surplus-fund charges throw around income earning property a large guarantee of safety. Any failure in the perpetuity of the property values is due to inadvertence or impotence in the property interests. For centuries the thought and effort of the business world have been directed toward the increasing permanence of property rights. ”

“ In this sense, all kinds of real and personal property would be embraced by it, for they all have an estimated value as the subjects of sale. Neither does it necessarily include all forms of investment in which the interest of the owner is expressed in money. ”

“ If men, living in equality, should grant to one of their number the exclusive right of property; and this sole proprietor should lend one hundred francs to the human race at compound interest, payable to his descendants twenty-four generations hence,—at the end of six hundred years this sum of one hundred francs, at five per cent., would amount to 107,854,010,777,600 francs ”

“ It further provides: 'The term 'real property' as used in this compact includes lands, * * * and interests in land, * * * and any and all things and rights usually included within the said term, and includes not only fees simple and absolute, but also any and all lesser interests, such as easements, rights of way, uses, leases, licenses, and all other incorporeal hereditaments and every estate, interest or right, legal or equitable, including terms of years and liens thereon by way of judgments, mortgages, or otherwise, and also claims for damage to real estate.' N.J.S.A. 32:8-4. ”

“ A property might be compelled to operate temporarily at rates insufficient to return the legal rate of interest on the physical value of the property, and while this condition continued, its commercial value would be less than its physical value, and yet this same property is worth more while running than if operation ceased and the business was allowed to die. ”

“ The owners of property bulwark themselves with certain prerogatives that have proved of the greatest importance in the conservation of property interests. Speaking broadly, there are four characteristic features of the shares of income which are derived from the ownership of property. ”

“ The rapid growth of property values during recent years has accentuated and emphasized the conflict between work and ownership. On the one hand, are the people who devote their time and energy to the production of wealth. On the other hand are the people who own income-yielding property. The workers receive a wage or a salary; the owners receive payments of rent, interest and dividends. Many of the workers are growing clamorous over "human rights." The property owners, persistent, and ever watchful, urge the "rights of property." ”

“ The insurance companies which held the mortgages had a very different kind of property, called by the lawyers incorporeal property, that is, not material property but an interest in the real or material property. ”

“ Property does become clothed with a public interest when used in a manner to make it of public consequence, and affect the community at large. ”

“ The man who owns a house has the right to benefit by enjoying its shelter, by selling it, or by renting it. This right, the right to or in the benefits of wealth—or more briefly, the right to or in the wealth itself—is called a "property right" or simply "property." ”

“ I.13 If things were always owned in fee simple, i.e. if there were no division of ownership,—no partnership rights, no shares, and no stock companies,—there would be little practical need to distinguish property from wealth; and as a matter of fact, in the rough popular usage, any article of wealth, and especially real estate, is often inaccurately called a "piece of property." ”

“ If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. ”

“ "Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interest of its owners that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. ”

“ Should there be the slightest irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society, imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of property, possession, and the means of production. ”

“ If, then, a certain number of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands, deposits and accumulates real property there. ”

“ On the other hand, it is equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases in their hands, would enter a protest. ”

“ But property is also the right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property—devouring and anthropophagous property—will be established. ”

“ It is to give the soil its value every year; it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that property is rational and legitimate,—admitting that rent is equitable and just,—I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent paid. ”

“ The full and true value of the property is the amount that the owner would be entitled to receive as just compensation upon a taking of that property by the state or the United States in the exertion of the power of eminent domain. ”

“ Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that respects property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property to dispose of. ”

“ As the company may not be protected in its actual investment, if the value of its property be plainly less, so the making of a just return for the use of the property involves the recognition of its fair value if it be more than its cost. The property is held in private ownership, and it is that property, and not the original cost of it, of which the owner may not be deprived without due process of law. ”

“ He may have papers to show that he is the owner, and that he is at the expense of keeping it up, and that he pays the taxes; but, after all, the real value of the property is in its beauty and the joy it gives to the beholder ”

“ But the property of business corporations, as rail-road, banking, insurance, manufacturing, and other stock companies, like that of individuals, is liable to taxation. Real estate, or real property, is land with the buildings and other articles erected or growing thereon. Personal estate, or personal property, consists of movables, as goods, chattels, money, and debts due from solvent debtors. ”

“ I make what use I choose of the ground to walk upon, and you will never convince me that the nominal owner of the property which I have appropriated gets better value out of the money it yields him than I do out of his land. ”

“ If improvements made in the vicinity of the property, the growth of city or town where it is located, the building of railroads, the development of the surrounding country and other like causes, give property an increased value, the owner cannot be deprived of such income by legislative action which prevents him from realizing an income commensurate with the enhanced value of his property. ”

“ For property which can be regarded as a condition of the performance of function, like the tools of the craftsman, or the holding of the peasant, or the personal possessions which contribute to a life of health and efficiency, forms an insignificant proportion, as far as its value is concerned, of the property rights existing at present. ”

“ Now, all experience shows that the great property-incentives are to increase property, protect property, and to buy with property those advantages which ought to be independent of property, viz., honors, dignities, power, and immunities. I cannot say how it is with men, but our histories are eloquent on this head. We have had the property-principle carried out thoroughly in our practice, and the result has shown that its chief operation is to render property as intact as possible, and the bones, and sinews, and marrow of all who do not possess it, its slaves. ”

“ In fact, they are always either deeds of gift, or of sale, or of exchange, or of the grant of precaria. It is impossible not to allow that the thousands of deeds of this kind are so many proofs of private property, since you can neither sell nor give away what is not already your own. ”

“ The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. ”

“ Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a workingman's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. ”

“ Thank God, sir, I have long possessed property far more than sufficient for all my desires. But, as those gentlemen know, it is one thing in this country to have property, and another to be able to withdraw a large sum of money from a business in active operation ”

“ The recipients of property income (derived from property ownership) and of service income (paid for the expenditure of effort) face each other and prepare for the conflict. Those who have put forth the effort, declare their right to the products of that effort. Those who own property hold fast to their property and to the prerogatives which are inseparable from them.
Law, custom, and business practice have made property income a first charge on industry. There can be no considerable readjustment of income values until the pre-eminent position of property is overbalanced by some social action. ”

“ It is a well settled rule in chancery, in the construction of wills as well as other instruments, that when land is directed to be sold, and turned into money, or money is directed to be employed in the purchase of land, courts of equity, in dealing with the subject, will consider it that species of property into which it is directed to be converted. ”

“ His claims are to be measured by his own productive capacity, not that of others. Property is the right of increase, not a poll-tax. How could a man, hardly capable of cultivating even a few acres by himself, demand of a community, on the ground of its use of ten thousand acres of his property, ten thousand times as much as he is incapable of producing from one acre? Why should the price of a loan be governed by the skill and strength of the borrower, rather than by the utility sacrificed by the proprietor? ”