ers property rights supreme in all essential particulars, it is but
natural that the perpetuation of these rights should be regarded as the
perpetuation of civilization itself.

The present organization of economic life in the United States permits
the wealth owners through their ownership to live without doing any work
upon the work done by their fellows. As recipients of property income
(rent, interest and dividends) they have a return for which they need
perform no service,--a return that allows them to "live on their
income."

The man who fails to assist in productive activity gives nothing of
himself in return for the food, clothing and shelter which he
enjoys,--that is, he lives on the labor of others. Where some have sowed
and reaped, hammered and drilled, he has regaled himself on the fruits
of their toil, while never toiling himself.

The matter appears most clearly in the case of an heir to an estate. The
father dies, leaving his son the title deeds to a piece of city land. If
he has no confidence in his son's business ability or if his son is a
minor, he may leave the land in trust, and have it administered in his
son's interest by some well organized trust company. The father did not
make the land, though he did buy it. The son neither made nor bought the
land, it merely came to him; and yet each year he receives a
rent-payment upon which he is able to live comfortably without doing any
work. It must at once be apparent that this son of his father,
economically speaking, performs no function in the community, but merely
takes from the community an annual toll or rental based on his ownership
of a part of the land upon, which his fellowmen depend for a living. Of
what will this toll consist? Of bread, shoes, motor-cars, cigars, books
and pictures,--the products of the labor of other men.

This son of his father is living on his income,--supported by the labor
of other people. He performs no labor himself, and yet he is able to
exist comfortably in a world where all of the things which are consumed
are the direct or indirect product of the labor of some human being.

Living on one's income is not a new social experience, but it is
relatively new in the United States. The practice found a reasonably
effective expression in the feudalism of medieval Europe. It has been
brought to extraordinary perfection under the industrialism of Twentieth
Century America.

Imagine the feelings of the early inhabitants of