the community insofar as it helps to secure efficient
management of wealth. If the son or relative has been in business with
the deceased, there is a reason that he should inherit the property,
and his succession to it makes the least disturbance to existing
business conditions. This consideration, however, has less weight as
the corporate form of organization becomes well nigh universal in
"big business." Every profligate son, every incompetent heir, is
an argument against the inheritance of property. It is to society's
interest that no able-bodied member should stand idle. Every child
should have presented to him the motive to use his powers in useful
ways. Moreover, many feel that the great fortunes now accumulating
through successive generations in the hands of a few families are a
danger to our free society, even if these fortunes should continue to
be well administered. There is a widespread feeling that the heredity
of great wealth is, like the heredity of political power, out of
harmony with the democratic spirit. Democracy wishes to see men and
individuals put to the test, not profiting forever by the deeds of
their forebears. This feeling is shared by those who cannot be charged
with radical prejudices. It was startling when a conservative body
of lawyers meeting in their state association in Illinois, passed
a resolution favoring moderate limits to inherited fortunes. Almost
every year sees bills of this purport introduced in the legislatures
and in Congress. Probably no one of many current radical proposals
is more widely favored than this, among men of otherwise conservative
social views. Tho sum most often mentioned as the proper limit is
$1,000,000, but in every case it is a sum larger than the fortune of
the person speaking.[4]

Sec. 6. #Limitations upon intestate inheritance#. A proposal less crude
and with strong reasons of social expediency in its favor is to
limit the right of intestate inheritance to persons that have been
in essential economic and social relations with the deceased. The
foregoing considerations show that the case for the right of gift in
the lifetime of the giver is strongest; that for the right of bequest
comes next. The man who has acquired wealth may usually be trusted to
decide who bear to him close social or personal relations, and to say
whose lives have in a measure furnished the motives of his activity.
But the right of intestate inheritance by distant relatives is one
th