the use of money, is not essential to the existence of a system of
private property. Communities such as the American colonies and as
many of the newly settled states, may consist almost entirely of
self-employed owners of land. Bulgaria, before the Balkan wars called
the peasant state, presented this organization (tho of course with
some wage-payment), as did also its neighbor Serbia. But given the
institution of private property with competition (freedom to buy
and sell), let manufactures and commerce develop to any extent,
and inequalities of fortunes increase while an increasing number of
persons work for wages. It is noteworthy that as this goes on (as
it has done in America at an increasing rate since the middle of the
nineteenth century) it is the agricultural and rural hand industries
that continue to be mainly worked by owner-managers and workers,
while it is the manufacturing, transporting, and large commercial
enterprises in which the labor is done for wages. The acceptance of
the wage-system thus far has been the inevitable price to be paid
for manufacturing and industrial development; and one of our economic
problems is to determine whether this must continue, and if so,
whether in the same measure as in the past.


[Footnote 1: The exceptions are probably unstated amounts of exempt
real estate (owned by municipalities, state, and nation), some of the
irrigation plants, part of the canals, and that part of the gold and
silver which is in the public treasury.]

[Footnote 2: See Vol. I, pp. 264-267. The law makes between property
rights and equitable rights some subtle distinctions, which have their
reason in the history, if not in the logic, of the law but which are
not essential to economic discussion. In some states this distinction