s an absentee
shareholder.

Indeed, the second reform would help the first. In so far as the
community tolerates functionless property it makes difficult, if not
impossible, the restoration of the small master in agriculture or in
industry, who cannot easily hold his own in a world dominated by great
estates or capitalist finance. In so far as it abolishes those kinds
of property which are merely parasitic, it facilitates the restoration
of the small property-owner in those kinds of industry for which small
ownership is adapted. A socialistic policy towards the former is not
{87} antagonistic to the "distributive state," but, in modern economic
conditions, a necessary preliminary to it, and if by "Property" is
meant the personal possessions which the word suggests to nine-tenths
of the population, the object of socialists is not to undermine
property but to protect and increase it. The boundary between large
scale and small scale production will always be uncertain and
fluctuating, depending, as it does, on technical conditions which
cannot be foreseen: a cheapening of electrical power, for example,
might result in the decentralization of manufactures, as steam resulted
in their concentration. The fundamental issue, however, is not between
different scales of ownership, but between ownership of different
kinds, not between the large farmer or master and the small, but
between property which is used for work and property which yields
income without it. The Irish landlord was abolished, not because he
owned a large scale, but because he was an owner and nothing more; if,
and when English land-ownership has been equally attenuated, as in
towns it already has been, it will deserve to meet the same fate. Once
the issue of the character of ownership has been settled, the question
of the size of the economic unit can be left to settle itself.

The first step, then, towards the organization of economic life for the
performance of function is to abolish those types of private property
in return for which no function is performed. The man who lives by
owning without working is necessarily supported by the industry of some
one else, and is, therefore, too expensive a luxury to be encouraged.
Though he deserves to be {88} treated with the leniency which ought to
be, and usually is not, shown to those who have been brought up from
infancy to any other disreputable trade, indulgence to individuals must
not condone the insti