The old-time dependence of one individual on the immediate caprices of another largely disappeared with the passing of slavery.  But in place of this personal subjection has come a more complex and in some ways more compelling and crushing control through the monopoly of wealth.  Property has become the medium through which the most binding of human relations are organized.  Accumulated wealth has become a great reservoir of power to which some individuals gain access through rights of birth, others through carefully guarded privileges, and still others through cunning devices or through force; but the masses of the people must gain their fragments of this wealth through arduous lifelong labor.  Even the earth, the original source of all wealth, is parceled out, and all of it is now owned by individuals or groups who control it in their own interests.  One man may thus have thousands of acres which he cannot use, and which he will not allow others to use, while another has not where to lay his head.  Laws jealously guard this wealth, which is the key to all opportunity; and public opinion, that most subtle, pervasive and compelling of all forms of law, gathers a thousand sacred initiations, rites, ceremonies, prohibitions and ex-communications around it.  A man who has killed his neighbor, or ruined his friend’s family, may be less punished by society than one who cheats at cards.

In primitive life a man may be a man by virtue of what he is; to-day he may have all the rights and privileges of any man by virtue of what he possesses.  In any community can be found strong men, honest, though misplaced or unfortunate, begging bread, wasting their lives for want of money to live decently.  And beside these one sees other men of weak physique and feeble minds, who have lived as parasites on society all their lives, but who are handsomely dressed, well fed, and possessed of power to do as they will, simply because they have access to wealth.  It is no wonder that if one would seek freedom to-day in America he must look for her image on a gold coin.

It is not difficult to see why property has become such a powerful instrument in civilization.  Anything which a person really owns, in a psychological sense, is a home for his soul.  Really owning an object, a toy, a garment, a watch or a home, means infusing one’s personality into it.  A man who possesses significant things has a new body through which his soul can work; this body trains his powers; and it should give him life more abundantly.  A landless man must become a soulless man.  Of course, we are not here speaking of legal ownership.  Many people own legally things into which they have never infused themselves; sometimes they have so many things that no individual could possibly infuse himself into them.