ABSTRACT
Law and custom are a product of use and wont, but use and wont will enforce a closer degree of conformity to material circumstances in that range and manner of conduct that has most immediately and intimately to do with the material circumstances. Modern ownership and nationalism have both come out of that period of profound change in the industrial arts that gave rise to the handicraft system. Ownership of natural resources —lands, forests, mineral deposits, water-power, harbor rights, franchises, etc.—rests not on a natural right of workmanship but on the ancient feudalistic ground of privilege and prescriptive tenure, vested interest, which runs back to the right of seizure by force and collusion. Ownership of industrial equipment and natural resources confers such a right legally to enforce unemployment, and so to make the community's workmanship useless to that extent. This is the Natural Right of Investment.
