ry by the
agents of private property-owners can be terminated. They may be
expropriated without compensation. They may voluntarily surrender it.
They may be frozen out by action on the part of the working
_personnel_, which itself undertakes such functions, if any, as they
have performed, and makes them superfluous by conducting production
without their assistance. Their proprietary interest may be limited or
attenuated to such a degree that they become mere _rentiers_, who are
guaranteed a fixed payment analogous to that of the debenture-holder,
but who receive no profits and bear no responsibility for the
organization of industry. They may be bought out. The first
alternative is exemplified by the historical confiscations of the past,
such as, for instance, by the seizure of ecclesiastical property by the
ruling classes of England, Scotland and most other Protestant states.
The second has rarely, if ever, been tried--the nearest approach to it,
perhaps, was the famous abdication of August 4th, 1789. The third is
the method apparently contemplated by the building guilds which are now
in process of formation in Great Britain. The fourth method of
treating the capitalist is followed by the co-operative movement. It
is also that proposed by the committee of employers and trade-unionists
in the building industry over which Mr. Foster presided, and which
proposed that employers should be paid a fixed salary, and a fixed rate
of {104} interest on their capital, but that all surplus profits should
be pooled and administered by a central body representing employers and
workers. The fifth has repeatedly been practised by municipalities,
and somewhat less often by national governments.

Which of these alternative methods of removing industry from the
control of the property-owner is adopted is a matter of expediency to
be decided in each particular case. "Nationalization," therefore,
which is sometimes advanced as the only method of extinguishing
proprietary rights, is merely one species of a considerable genus. It
can be used, of course, to produce the desired result. But there are
some industries, at any rate, in which nationalization is not necessary
in order to bring it about, and since it is at best a cumbrous process,
when other methods are possible, other methods should be used.
Nationalization is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Properly
conceived its object is not to establish state management of in