The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-02-07
OWNERSHIP.

makes as interesting reading as the
 book itself. Sometimes indeed q good deal more so, especially if the book is such as to excite counter ideas which the critic especially de sires should obtain rival credence.
 Thus Scott Nearing is the author of a book entitled Poverty and
 Riches. It is a noticeable as we'll as notable book. and it is replete with an array of facts which are made use of Intentionally to con demn a system wherein the worker and the product of his work are so far removed from social control and wherein the distribution of the pro- duct of collective labor is so un- even. so unjust and so negotiable.
 Naturally his views go at once into immediate antagonism with the conventional views of orthodox pro- prietorship and proprietorship which aids and abets the unequal system of distribution, peruses the work of Professor Nearing with anrry brain.
 This work is reviewed in the out of the way corners ot the Literary C!geat for Decembe, ?. Affecting sl munathy for the author and the question which he handles. it is moved to an excited challenge ot the conclusions and the purport Of the book reviewed and finally the critic thus relieves himself
 With all this the reader can not be but sympathetic. He knows that often labor does nor receive it's dues, that wealth (sic) often receives more than it's proportion. But he is not able to follow the author in the assumption that "ownership" (e. g. of machinery, plant, etc. is para sitic" The great fallacy of this stirring book is it's apparently de- signed ignoring of the fact that ownership and ownership alone G.. C. wealth., makes possible the vast opportunities of labor, provides the plant, the machinery, the material. the means of marketing the pro- duct and often the market itself. The one sidedness of the presenta tion is SO pronounced that the sym pathy awakened by the condition of the very poor is checked by the feel ing that due justice is not done the providing of the necessary condi- tions for work. One may even question the morality. let alone the economics of the proposition that industry may be carried on apart from the thought of profit.
 Certainly that remarkable out burst has the refreshing feature Of novelty although what may be thought of the economics of a critic sees fit to identify ownership with wealth is assuredly better left un- said,
 The idea that proprietorship has provided for society the means Of existence and not that it is labor of brain and hand that which creates wealth, and is with the natural re- sources wealth itself, is quite com mon even in places less reserved ! than the critical pages of the Lite rary Digest. It is due to super fcial knowledge of the ele- 1 ments of political economy added to the cololquial misuse 1 of the term "capital". That misuse | Is the identification, common enough | in labor papers at that, wherein the capitalist is understood, in the ex- pression capital, because of the | fact that the present econmic sy- stem is so indissolubly interwoven | with private ownership.
 The audacity of identifying any | part, or that part of wealth used to | create more wealth as ownership is more due to ignorance of the eco- homie facts than anything else, be- cause behind capital" today stands | he private ownership which has by l various and devious means often l enough taken hold of the common | wealth.
 Yet in this day when nations un- der the stress of war conditions l nave summarily removed from the scheme of distribution the element l