the steam roads of the country, or the street railway service of a city, may turn out to be such an event. The anthracite coal strike undoubtedly was. No one would probably accuse so "safe and sane" an organ as The New York Tribune of socialistic learnings, and yet this paper remarked:
The old doctrine that a man may do what he will with his own worked well enough when the life of the community was not dependent on what he did own, but some way or other it does not fit the case when a whole community is under one control. It did not seriously matter if one mine was shut down and its product cut off. The community could allow the owner to say it was his, and his use of it did not concern them. But when all the coal mines are subject to one will, the way that will works is of profound interest to those dependent on it. The mines are at law unquestionably private property. Nobody can go into court and get relief because the mines do not produce the coal he needs. But there is a moral trust—even kings now admit that, even though they rule by divine right, they hold a trust for their people. Prerogative and title are with the operators, but the people must have coal, and if the operators forget the moral obligations attached to their property-holding they will force the substitution of legal for moral obligation in some form or other.[1]
If the public mind veers strongly toward socialism, there are at least three ways by which it may attain its goal. First, private property can be more heavily taxed and more heavily subjected to the police power of the state. All of the machinery required for these purposes already exists. No constitutional change is necessary. Private property is held subject to the right of the state to tax. In addition, in such cities as New York, the building department supervises all structural changes or defects in buildings; the tenement-house department regulates the number of windows required for light and air and all alterations in houses occupied by more than three families, and if its orders are not complied with this department has power to vacate property and lock it up; the fire-department prevention bureau has charge of such matters as fire escapes; the board of health sees that certain sanitary requirements are complied with; the highway department requires abutting owners to keep their sidewalks in repair; the state factory inspectors have supervision of establishments where one or more men are employed, and the street-cleaning department looks after such things as garbage receptacles. An increase in the scrutiny of the public eye in each of these directions is easily conceivable. There is no hard and fast line between "taxation, reasonable regulation and fair payment," on the one hand and confiscation, on the other. The difference is a matter of degree and of opinion.
Secondly, a much more important gateway to socialism stands wide open, namely, the regulation of bequest and inheritance, neither of which is a property right under the federal and state constitutions. So
- ↑ Quoted by The Outlook, August 30, 1902, p. 1035.
