become more prominent and decisive. I do not profess ability to complete this definition, but I may offer certain suggestions about the principles by means of which the distinction may be drawn.
That must be recognized as one's own—necessary governmental deductions being eliminated for simplicity—which is one's just portion of the fruits of one's labor, whether independently or in combination with others. That must be recognized as property—for convenience left under the administration of the proprietor—which it is possible to utilize to the combined advantage of the worker and of society. This vague and involved statement corresponds with the involutions of reality. The fact is that the legal qualifications of absolute ownership are much less intimate than the automatic practical qualifications, whenever it is attempted to couple ownership with use and enjoyment. 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. I mean more specifically that natural resources, accumulated capital, perfected methods, processes, devices, no less than hygienic, chemical, medicinal discoveries, belong to man, not to men. The laws of nature make it impossible for individuals to own them. The extent to which the laws of the state shall become the accomplices of individuals, in turning proprietorship into monopoly, is a matter for social intelligence to determine.
To develop this suggestion somewhat more in detail, things which are a fair equivalent for the individual's labor, things which in their nature are useful only as consumed by individuals, may fairly be considered proper objects of absolute ownership in the sense already indicated. Thus, food, clothes, household utensils, books, pictures, means of recreation, money held as the equivalent of these, assuming of course that each is the right-
