populations in common, when peaceful intercourse rather than perpetual feud was the obvious interest of great peoples, the feudal machinery became first cumbrous, then obstructive, then oppressive. The occupation of the lords was gone. Work for different kinds of social agents had appeared. In the long struggle to rid themselves of the burden men almost let go the memory that it had ever been a blessing.
Every class, occupation and institution, past or present, is a specific application or perversion of this unwritten law of reciprocal human agency. The presumption behind our political, industrial, civil, educational and ecclesiastical order is that it is the best arrangement at present practicable to secure from each member of society the quality and quantity of work which each is best fitted to render, in return for the services of society as a whole.
To be specific, the man who clears land and brings it under cultivation, or the man who improves land so that it offers good locations for homes, fulfills the letter and the spirit of the unwritten law of public service, and he deserves his pay. So of the men who promote industry by operating banks; who build mills or railroads; who seek markets for produce, or who watch the legality of transactions involved in all these activities. But suspicion is rife that society is bearing an enormous load because some men are inventing and the remainder are tolerating pretenses of performing these functions and of deserving their revenues, when in reality they are dead weights or worse upon industry.
The men who cleared parts of Manhattan Island a hundred or more years ago deserved generous returns for their labor. If any of their remote grandchildren are collecting large ground rents from the success of the family in compelling other people to go out of their way and improve less desirable land, the legality of their claim may be undisputed, but its justice is more than doubtful. I should be much surprised to learn of an economist today so mortgaged to tradition as to believe that our present system of landed proprietorship corresponds with
