country bank, and has turned the
mass of mankind into a proletariat working under the agents and for the
profit of those who own.

The characteristic fact, which differentiates most {62} modern property
from that of the pre-industrial age, and which turns against it the
very reasoning by which formerly it was supported, is that in modern
economic conditions ownership is not active, but passive, that to most
of those who own property to-day it is not a means of work but an
instrument for the acquisition of gain or the exercise of power, and
that there is no guarantee that gain bears any relation to service, or
power to responsibility. For property which can be regarded as a
condition of the performance of function, like the tools of the
craftsman, or the holding of the peasant, or the personal possessions
which contribute to a life of health and efficiency, forms an
insignificant proportion, as far as its value is concerned, of the
property rights existing at present. In modern industrial societies
the great mass of property consists, as the annual review of wealth
passing at death reveals, neither of personal acquisitions such as
household furniture, nor of the owner's stock-in-trade, but of rights
of various kinds, such as royalties, ground-rents, and, above all, of
course shares in industrial undertakings which yield an income
irrespective of any personal service rendered by their owners.
Ownership and use are normally divorced. The greater part of modern
property has been attenuated to a pecuniary lien or bond on the product
of industry which carries with it a right to payment, but which is
normally valued precisely because it relieves the owner from any
obligation to perform a positive or constructive function.

Such property may be called passive property, or property for
acquisition, for exploitation, or for power, {63} to distinguish it
from the property which is actively used by its owner for the conduct
of his profession or the upkeep of his household. To the lawyer the
first is, of course, as fully property as the second. It is
questionable, however, whether economists shall call it "Property" at
all, and not rather, as Mr. Hobson has suggested, "Improperty," since
it is not identical with the rights which secure the owner the produce
of his toil, but is opposite of them. A classification of proprietary
rights based upon this difference would be instructive. If they were
arranged according to the clo