dustry,
but to remove the dead hand of private ownership, when the private
owner has ceased to perform any positive function. It is unfortunate,
therefore, that the abolition of obstructive property rights, which is
indispensable, should have been identified with a single formula, which
may be applied with advantage in the special circumstances of some
industries, but need not necessarily be applied in all. Ownership is
not a right, but a bundle of rights, and it is possible to strip them
off piecemeal as well as to strike them off simultaneously. The
ownership of capital involves, as we have said, three main claims; the
right to interest as the price of capital, the right to {105} profits,
and the right to control, in virtue of which managers and workmen are
the servants of shareholders. These rights in their fullest degree are
not the invariable accompaniment of ownership, nor need they
necessarily co-exist. The ingenuity of financiers long ago devised
methods of grading stock in such a way that the ownership of some
carries full control, while that of others does not, that some bear all
the risk and are entitled to all the profits, while others are limited
in respect to both. All are property, but not all carry proprietary
rights of the same degree.

As long as the private ownership of industrial capital remains, the
object of reformers should be to attenuate its influence by insisting
that it shall be paid not more than a rate of interest fixed in
advance, and that it should carry with it no right of control. In such
circumstances the position of the ordinary shareholder would
approximate to that of the owner of debentures; the property in the
industry would be converted into a mortgage on its profits, while the
control of its administration and all profits in excess of the minimum
would remain to be vested elsewhere. So, of course, would the risks.
But risks are of two kinds, those of the individual business and those
of the industry. The former are much heavier than the latter, for
though a coal mine is a speculative investment, coal mining is not, and
as long as each business is managed as a separate unit, the payments
made to shareholders must cover both. If the ownership of capital in
each industry were unified, which does not mean centralized, those
risks which are incidental to individual competition would be {106}
eliminated, and the credit of each unit would be that of the whole.

Such a change