tance in the conservation of property interests. Speaking broadly, there are four characteristic features of the shares of income which are derived from the ownership of property. First, property income enjoys priority in its claims upon the proceeds of industry. Second, the vicissitudes of industry affect property income less sharply than they affect service income. Third, income-yielding property exhibits a tendency to concentrate in the hands of a small fraction of the people. The total effect of these characteristics of property income is stupendous. The priority, regularity, permanence and concentrability of property income combine to place the owners of modern income-yielding property in a position of economic security that surpasses the dreams of past ages.
Those who are giving their time and energy to the production of wealth, face the fact that property rights have been so construed as to give property owners a first claim on production and to make property income a fixed charge on the industry of the community. This priority of claim has played a leading part in raising property to a position of supremacy in the economic world.
The risks of industry, the burden of economic uncertainty, and the losses incident to the dislocations of the industrial systems are carried in the first instance by labor. The first appearance of hard times is followed by a decrease in the working force. The least curtailment in orders leads to part-time work. Wage rates are not cut—that method is crude and disastrous—but men and women are laid off temporarily or permanently. Bonds still draw their interest; the dividends are paid on stocks; and labor waits for a job. The defender of property income will say at once,—"If there is nothing to do, why pay labor?" The counter question is obvious. "If there is nothing to do, why pay capital?" "Ah," responds the propertied interests, "you can get rid of the laborer by firing him, but the investment still stands." That answer carries the essential distinction in priority between the
