THE DUTIES CONNECTED WITH PRIVATE PROPERTY

New Zealand Tablet, 20 October 1921, Page 11

THE DUTIES CONNECTED WITH PRIVATE PROPERTY

(By the Rev. John E. Rothensteiner, in the Fortnightly Review, N.Y.) It may surprise many, though it is not really surprising in itself, what utterly bad arguments are produced to sustain such, a rotten cause as usury or the taking of interest. Hero is one out of many, furnished by a writer in a late number of the America of New York (August 13): | "The owner has a right to take interest, first, by reason of his proprietorship, for an owner may do what he wills with his own." An owner may do what he wills with his own, in furtherance of the common good, not in violation of the rights of society. In fact, no man is the absolute owner of anything. According to Christian ethics, man is the steward of God. The Almighty Creator retains the proprietorship of all things created. Indeed, God has made all things on earth for the use of man; not of one man, however, but of mankind. The poorest and lowliest has a God-given right to a fair share in the goods of earth. The rich man is bound' in conscience to use his superfluous wealth for the good of his less fortunate neighbor. The unequal distribution of wealth has for its purpose, not the enslavement of the poor by the rich, but rather the, fostering of brotherly love and kindness between the various .classes of society. Not that some might live in luxury and ease, and others pine in misery and want, but that the poor , and unfortunate and the thoughtless and wayward might be helped to a better way of living, and that the rich might gain friends for themselves by the proper use of "the mammon of iniquity." ,v ;:

The human race is the great family of God, in which the rich and the poor, the' strong and the weak, are members on equal terms. It is plain, therefore, that. no. one may do what he wills with his own to the direct detriment of his brother. Now, it is easily possible that, under present capitalistic conditions, the rich will grow richer and the poor poorer, and that within measurable time a few will own the entire wealth of the earth, and the masses will have / to content themselves with the scraps and leavings, a condition of affairs in absolute contradiction to the divine ordinance. Some may say that these results will never come because other forces will tend to equalise matters. Possibly so; yet our contention stands that the 'principle, "an owner may do what he wills with his own," must inevitably lead to the conclusion we have drawn from it. What shall we say of the fatherhood of God, and what of the brotherhood of man, if some fortunate owner of a carload of wheat dumps it into the river because he cannot get the desired price for it ,from a half-starved populace? This is no imaginary case. Vast harvests of wheat and corn have been allowed to rot in the fields because the price of these staples was not as high as anticipated. And yet there are millions of God's children to-day crying for bread, slowly starving, and dying for lack of this very gift of God's goodness to mankind, but now left rotting in the fields, on the principle that "the owner may do as he wills with his own." If the poor are.constrained to pay a high price for bread when bread is scarce, they should also have the advantage of cheap bread when bread is plentiful. To create an artificial scarcity by keeping a part'of the harvests of the earth from the market, is a sin against God and mankind. * _ > But, you say, the market must be sustained. Overproduction demoralises the market. Therefore it is economically right and morally just to manipulate the output. We ask: Does man exist for the sake of the market, or the market for the sake of man? Let us assume that the market price of apples. is high. Only those better situated can afford to buy them. Prices being high, however, and-the apple crop being good, shipments are beginning to pour in. Prices begin to decline, but the profits are growing less. Now to keep up prices the dealers dump a number of carloads into the river in order "to stabilise the market." The poorer people would be glad to buy these apples at a fair price, but that would not help the market. "An owner may do what he wills with.his own," say these usurers. Are they right? . No. Private ownership is sacred only if it is held on this Christian principle that all men are but stewards of God and must render a strict account to Him for the goods and talents He has entrusted to them. It is partly on account of the almost universal disregard of this principle that the good Lord declared it so very difficult, nay well nigh impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Thus the world is gradually regaining the conviction that the unrest, tho economic disturbance, and social misery so characteristic of our day cannot be remedied by any thing less than the full and honest acceptance of the law of Christ.

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