facture of gas; whether that by-product appears or
not, it is not proposed that the rights themselves should
be abdicated. For they are regarded, not as a con-
ditional trust, but as a property, which may, indeed,
give way to the special exigencies of extraordinary
emergencies, but which resumes its sway when the
emergency is over, and in normal times is above dis-
cussion.

That conception is written large over the history
of the nineteenth century, both in England and in
America. The doctrine which it inherited was that
property was held by an absolute right on an in-
dividual basis, and to this fundamental it added an-
other, which can be traced in principle far back into
history, but which grew to its full stature only after
the rise of capitalist industry, that societies act both
unfairly and unwisely when they limit opportunities
of economic enterprise. Hence every attempt to im-
pose obligations as a condition of the tenure of prop-
erty or of the exercise of economic activity has been
met by uncompromising resistance. The story of the
struggle between humanitarian sentiment and the the-
ory of property transmitted from the eighteenth cen-
tury is familiar. No one has forgotten the opposi-
tion offered in the name of the rights of property to
factory legislation, to housing reform, to interference
with the adulteration of goods, even to the compulsory
sanitation of private houses. "May I not do what I
like with my own?" was the answer to the proposal
to require a minimum standard of safety and sanita-
tion from the owners of mills and houses. Even to

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