Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/115

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into a capitalist he has acquired a mate and left a family, and that when he dies his youthful son, who has never done a stroke of work in his life, succeeds to the whole of the property and organization which Crusoe has built up, and that the other inhabitants of the island and their progeny are expected to work for Crusoe, Junior, on the same terms on which they worked for the original organizer, then we find ourselves faced with a claim that is much more difficult to justify. Why should this youngster, just because he is the son of a successful organizer, be supported during the rest of his existence by the labour of others with the confident expectation that he will be able to hand on to his own progeny a similar claim on the labour of the workers of the world?

We may say that hereditary property has been an essential part of every civilization worthy of the name which has been produced since the history of man has been known. But so have many things which are difficult to justify, except on the ground that having existed they must have for some inscrutable reason been necessary. A Roman or a Greek would have probably given the same answer if one had questioned the equity and justice of the institution of slavery. Moreover, landed