These questions cannot be answered by saying that the world has always been run this way. In the first place, it is not true. Never, during all the years of the world, until less than a century ago, did a few men own the tools with which all other men work. In fact, it is only within the last 40 years that such ownership has divided the population into a small master class and a vast servant class. But even if the world had always been run as it is running, that, in itself, would not make it right. And anything that is wrong cannot be made right without changing it. We Socialists are determined to change the laws relating to private property. We assert that the present laws are wrong. We are prepared to prove that they are wrong. We are eager to demonstrate that the poverty of the masses is the direct result of the ownership, by a few, of a certain kind of property that should not be privately owned. We refer, of course, to the industrial machinery of the country, which is owned by those who do not use it and used by those who do not own it. Our proposal, therefore, is this: We say that all property that is collectively used should be collectively owned, and that all property that is individually used should be individually owned. The last clause should help out the gentleman who is afraid that Socialism would rob him of the ownership of his undershirt. The first clause will help him to own an undershirt. Please take this suggestion: Distrust any man who advises you to distrust Socialism because of the fear that it would destroy the individual’s right to own property. Such a man is always either ignorant upon the subject of Socialism or crooked upon the subject of capitalism. There are no exceptions, for Socialism does not mean what he says it means and would not do what he says it would do. Socialism would give such a meaning to the individual right to own property as it has never had in all the history of the world. Under Socialism, the individual would not only have the right to own property, but he would have the power to exercise the right. He would own property. If Socialism would not give every head of a family the power exclusively to control as good a house as the $5,000–a-year man now lives in, Socialists would have no use for Socialism. The actual ownership of the house might or might not rest with the individual. To prevent grafters from grabbing houses, it might be deemed advisable to let the state hold the title. But the state would protect the individual in the right exclusively to control the house as long as he wished to live in it, even if it were for a lifetime. If the people so desired, the state might even go further and give the children, after the death of their parents, the same right. But no Socialist government would permit a landlord class to fatten upon a homeless class.