o have
influence over him, he may even "be a king!" But that is not compulsory,
not essential, and there are practically no conditional restrictions
whatever laid upon him.

Those who belong to this shareholding class only partially, who
partially depend upon dividends and partially upon activities, occur in
every rank and order of the whole social body. The waiter one tips
probably has a hundred or so in some remote company, the will of the
eminent labour reformer reveals an admirably distributed series of
investments, the bishop sells tea and digs coal, or at any rate gets a
profit from some unknown persons tea-selling or coal-digging, to eke out
the direct recompense of his own modest corn-treading. Indeed, above the
labouring class, the number of individuals in the social body whose
gross income is entirely the result of their social activities is very
small. Previously in the world's history, saving a few quite exceptional
aspects, the possession and retention of property was conditional upon
activities of some sort, honest or dishonest, work, force, or fraud. But
the shareholding ingredient of our new society, so far as its
shareholding goes, has no need of strength or wisdom; the countless
untraceable Owner of the modern world presents in a multitudinous form
the image of a Merovingian king. The shareholder owns the world _de
jure_, by the common recognition of the rights of property; and the
incumbency of knowledge, management, and toil fall entirely to others.
He toils not, neither does he spin; he is mechanically released from the
penalty of the Fall, he reaps in a still sinful world all the practical
benefits of a millennium--without any of its moral limitations.

It will be well to glance at certain considerations which point to the
by no means self-evident proposition, that this factor of irresponsible
property is certain to be present in the social body a hundred years
ahead. It has, no doubt, occurred to the reader that all the conditions
of the shareholder's being unfit him for co-operative action in defence
of the interests of his class. Since shareholders do nothing in common,
except receive and hope for dividends, since they may be of any class,
any culture, any disposition, or any level of capacity, since there is
nothing to make them read the same papers, gather in the same places, or
feel any sort of sympathy with each other beyond the universal sympathy
of man for man, they will, one may anticipa