The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1901-10-17


and that my right to an opportunity to
create the property essential to my well
fare is also inalienable. I would not
have private property less sacred.
would make mans right in his property
so sacred that by no bargain, no con-
tract, no law, could the producer ever be
alienated from his products. This is
the property basis Of ownership. The
right to property is grounded in service,
and he who serves cannot be made to
starve except by the violation of prop
erty rights. While contending for private
ownership in form, private ownership in
fact has practically disappeared.
Private ownership in some things in
evitably involves public ownership in
others. If am to own the thing which
I am to use by myself, I ought also,
and by the same reasoning, to own in
common with others, the things which
in common with others / must use.
The effort has been made to extend
private ownership to the things which
we use in common, with the result that
private ownership in the things which
we use privately has become impossible.
While contending for the form of
private property, how small has the field
become covered by my necessities in
which it is possible for me to own the
working plants necessary to the pro-
duction of these necessities. I must
have clothes. That involves a cotton
field, herd of sheep, a wooden mill, a
cotton factory, tailor shop. How many
of us own any of these things which
are essential to the production of our
commonest comforts? must have food.
1t involves a field, mill, a bakery.
How many of us own any of these
things? I must have shelter. It in
wolves the forest, the lumber mill, the
planning mill, the brick factory, the hard
ware establishment, the furnace, the
mines. How few of us have any owner
ship in any of these things, on every
one of which our very existence de-
ponds? 1 must have the means of trans
portatlon. How many of us own rail-
roads? l am a farmer. The most a
farmer can hope to own is the land
from which he can produce the raw ma
terials from which other hands will
manufacture the provisions for his sup
port. Butter, eggs, vegetables and meats
for his table he may produce, and for
the production of these his private
ownership is still possible, however un-
profitable, it may be as compared with
associated effort in the same lines. But
all other lines of his food, his fuel, his
buildings, his clothing, must come to
him through the market, produced and
controlled by great plants in which he
has no ownership. The farmer does
have private property in some of the
tools used in creating the articles of his
use, but his ownership is so small as
compared with the enormous industrial
plants upon which he must rely for that
share of his living which his own single
handed industry cannot create that he is
really as dependent for his existence on
the tools, shops, factories and mines
owned by others as are those who are
wholly without title to any share of the
tools of their industry.
The farmers are the last to come
under the sway of this necessary asso-
citation in production. Individual enter
prise has held on to agriculture long
after its impossibility had been estab-
lished everywhere else. But even there
the corporation farm has come at last.
The corporation orchard is already the
master Of the market; cattle, sheep and
the wheat field are as completely under
the control of the corporation, as is
coal and iron. Agricultural and horti-
cultural workers must fall in line with
the rest. They cannot longer individual
ly own and operate the tools and lands
OF their own special industry. 1t has
been half a century since they could own
and control the tools of both their own
industry and the other industries, then
so related to their own, that with their
own tools they could provide without as
ISOLATION the things used in their own
support.
1t is not question whether associa-
ton ought to come. It has already
come and is already in possession. The
corporation is in the saddle and it is
not going to get out. All workers will
become or remain, for most of us are
there already-all workers will become
either part owners in great corporate
enterprises, or they will be left, not only
without common ownership in the things
OF common use, but they will also be
entirely unable to establish any sufficient
ownership even in the articles of their
daily need for their individual private
use. individuals come and go, but the
great properties destined for the COM
mon use go on forever. The corporation
outlives the individual and with the
corporation possession is perpetual. The
corporation is a device whereby the