The Unpopular Review | Page 8

of enforcement: it is effective in
controlling the scrupulous; to the unscrupulous it is mere paper. In
many instances its net effect is only to increase the risks connected with
the conduct of a business.
When England prohibited importation of manufactures from France,
the import trade continued none the less, under the form of smuggling.
The risk of seizure was merely added to the risk of fire and flood. Just
as one could insure against the latter risks, so the practice arose of
insuring against seizure. At one time, at any rate, in the French ports
were to be found brokers who would insure the evasion of a cargo of
goods for a premium of fifteen per cent. At the safe distance of a
century and a half, the absurd prohibition and its incompetent
administration are equally comic. At the time, however, there was
nothing comic in the contempt for law and order thus engendered, in
the feeling of outrage on the part of those ruined by seizures, and in the
alliance of respectable merchants with the thieves and footpads enlisted
for the smuggling trade.
VIII

It is a common observation of present day social reformers that an
excessive regard is displayed by our governmental organs for security
of property, while security of non-property rights is neglected. And this
would indeed be a serious indictment of the existing order if there were
in fact a natural antithesis between the security of property and security
of the person. There is, however, no such antithesis. In the course of
history the establishment of security of property has, as a rule, preceded
the establishment of personal security, and has provided the conditions
in which personal security becomes possible. Adequate policing is
essential to any form of security. Property can pay for policing; the
person can not. This is a crude and materialistic interpretation of the
facts, but it is essentially sound.
How much personal security existed in England, five centuries and a
half ago, when it was possible for Richard to carve his way through
human flesh to the throne? The lowly, certainly, enjoyed no greater
security than the high born. How much personal security exists in the
late Macedonian provinces of the Turkish Empire, or in northern
Mexico? It is safe to issue a challenge to all the world to produce an
instance, contemporary or historical, of a country in which property is
insecure and in which human life and human happiness are not still
more insecure. On the other hand, it is difficult to produce an instance
of a state in which security of property has long been established, in
which there is not a progressive sensitiveness about the non-propertied
rights of man. It is in the countries where the sacredness of private
property is a fetich, that one finds recognition of a universal right to
education, of a right to protection against violence and against
epidemic disease, of a right to relief in destitution. These are perhaps
meagre rights; but they represent an expanding category. The right to
support in time of illness and in old age is making rapid progress. The
development of such rights is not only not incompatible with security
of property, but it is, in large measure, a corollary of property security.
Personal rights shape themselves upon the analogy of property rights;
they utilize the same channels of thought and habit. One of the most
powerful arguments for "social insurance" is its very name. Insurance is
recognized as an essential to the security of property; it is therefore
easy to make out a case for the application of the principle to
non-propertied claims.

Some may claim that the security of property has now fulfilled its
mission; that we can safely allow the principle to decay in order to
concentrate our attention upon the task of establishing non-propertied
rights. But let us remember that we are not removed from barbarism by
the length of a universe. The crust of orderly civilization is deep under
our feet: but not six hundred years deep. The primitive fires still smoke
on our Mexican borders and in the Balkans. And blow holes open from
time to time through our own seemingly solid crust--in Colorado, in
West Virginia, in the Copper Country. It is evidently premature to
affirm that the security of property has fulfilled its mission.
IX
The question at issue, is not, however, the rights of property against the
rights of man--or more honestly--the rights of labor. The claims of
labor upon the social income may advance at the expense of the claims
of property. In the institutional struggle between the propertied and the
propertyless, the sympathies of the writer are with the latter party. It is
his hope and belief that an ever increasing share of the social income
will assume