This, then, would be a true democratization[6] of property. The process, ordinarily called by this name, the dispersion of shares, stocks and bonds, is only the process--called legitimate--of extracting good hard cash from all pockets, even those most scantily supplied, centralizing it, monopolizing the real possession of it in exchange for a certificate of nominal ownership, making it breed or expand, and permitting to flow back in interest, dividends, etc., only tiny crumbs until the day comes when the poor investors cease to get even these microscopical returns. This pretended democratization of property results simply in the formation of a financial aristocracy creating scandalous fortunes out of the good dollars of the small investors, and if these dollars, when the paper accepted in their stead is no longer worth anything, are lost for their former possessors, they are not lost for everyone. (They have become the reward of "abstinence."--Translator.) Let the stocks representing part-ownership in a company lose all value--this is an occurrence that the shareholders and bondholders of the Panama canal, for example, can tell you is not unknown in our bourgeois society--and the shareholder finds himself, in this instance, permitted to enjoy all the blessings of expropriation without any indemnifying compensation; sometimes even he has the delicate attention of an invitation from the Receiver or the Courts to pour some more money into the hole where his former savings disappeared. Now even in this case the owners of this sort of personal property do not make too much ado about the matter. Why should they complain any more bitterly on the day when there will be, as it were, only a substitution of one kind of stocks or shares for another, when they will all become stockholders and bondholders of the great society (the Co-operative Commonwealth), instead of being shareholders and bondholders in one or several little societies or companies? By this transformation they will gain complete assurance against risk of loss--a real enough danger to-day when, after the actual control of property passes into the hands of financial magnates, the revenue of the nominal owners, the stockholders, etc., falls to zero or nearly zero, thus cutting off their means of existence or enjoyment. They will lose only one thing: the power of dominating the labor of others and of appropriating its fruits; while they will have the privilege of enjoying the common wealth and the advantages springing from its co-operative employment. Healthy adults will take for their own use, provided they work, their share of the social products. If they are already accustomed to any kind of work, they will find no hardship in this obligation to perform useful labor; if they are not accustomed to it, they will acquire the habit and will find their health greatly improved thereby in every respect. If they are old and infirm they will be liberally provided for by society.