m; and, consequently, a
workingman's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at
his own disposal as the wages he receives for his labor."

It would be interesting to know what the Pope would say if the
workingman invested his savings in a slave, and whether the Holy
Father would consider the slave only the workingman's "wages in
another form." Pope Leo certainly never could have intended to state
that the mere purchase of a thing was sufficient to convey ownership.
Yet that is just what the last sentence quoted amounts to. The justice
of the ownership depends entirely upon whether the thing purchased be
rightfully capable of ownership, in the first place, and whether it be
obtained from the rightful owner, in the second.

"As effects follow their cause," Pope Leo says a little further on,
"so it is just and right that the results of labor should belong to
him who has labored."

There he strikes the key-note of the right of property upheld alike by
the best churchmen and economists in all ages. That is the natural law
of labor. It is opposed to the theory of State socialism, and to what
many in this country understand by nationalism. If the Pope had
adhered to that proposition, he would have been saved from his
illogical position. It is undoubtedly true that a man is entitled to
that of which he is the producing cause. And in some branches of labor
which are more intimately associated with the earth than others, such
as agricultural operations, it is true that the results of labor, and
the improvements made upon land, become physically inseparable from
the land itself, so that he who would own what his labor has produced
must also have security of tenure, and exclusive possession of "that
portion of nature's field which he cultivates."

It is for want of distinguishing carefully between possession and
ownership that the Pope falls into his ludicrous economic blunders.
This part of his encyclical is absolutely self-contradictory. He is
arguing for the securing to the laborer of the fruits of his labor.
The workman on land must have ownership of those things he has
produced, and hence must have exclusive possession of that part of the
earth which he tills. He must have such disposal of it as will enable
him by the exertion of his labor to secure a proportionate reward. But
this is not ownership. Ownership carries with it something more than
this. Once "divide the earth among private owners," as the Pope pu