1. _Unmodified private control of property is unknown: the public makes many reservations in its own interest._ Few realize the manifold ways in which property rights are limited. There is, first, a whole set of limitations to prevent nuisances. An owner in many situations is not free to build a slaughter-house or to start a glue-factory on his land. Property is governed by general public utility, and anything that threatens to become a nuisance or a danger is excluded. When, under the right of eminent domain, the state or the railroad takes the old homestead from its owner who would live and die there, the payment of money damages to him does not make this the less a limitation of his property rights. Rights of way on property exist either through contract or by prescription permitting its public use. Most important of all limitations is the right of taxation, by which society takes more or less of private incomes for purposes of which the individual owners may in no way approve. [Sidenote: Private claims limiting property rights] 2. _The law enforces a multitude of private claims against private owners._ A variety of rights called easements or servitudes may attach to private property, modifying its exclusive use. Leases for any period are a virtual limitation of the control and division of the ownership. Both the holder of the lease and the owner of the property have certain rights before the law. The lender of money secured by mortgage has a legally recognized and enforceable interest in the mortgaged wealth. Property is left in trust for the benefit of persons or of institutions or of the public, and is administered by trustees who are strictly bound to the execution of the terms of their instructions. Contracts of many sorts are entered into by owners, limiting their control in manifold ways, and the law enforces these contracts. These all form a complex of equitable claims, which together equal in value one undivided property right, which in turn equals the value of the wealth. These claims mutually limit each other (whether they be called equitable claims, or liens, or property rights), and wealth is not multiplied by multiplying the claims, as the lawmakers unfortunately sometimes assume to be the case. [Sidenote: Limitation of bequest]