Book Reviews

The Institution of Property. By C. Reinold Noyes. New York: Longmans, Green Co., 1936. Pp. xvi, 645. $7.50. This book owes its existence to an economist's desire for a more accurate insight into the facts of contemporary economic life than, in his opinion, present economic science is able to present. He charges that up to now economics has not got much beyond an oversimplified mechanics of the production and distribution of tangible goods and services, based on an analysis of such few elements as land, labor, capital, and, more recently, enterprise. The actual facts, he feels, are more complicated, and the economic structure of society cannot be understood without an insight into "the social abstractions which lie between the concrete persons and the concrete objects," into "the arrangements, the practices and the rules of society which become the most influential realities." And again: "The business world thinks in terms of 'rights' almost more than it does in terms of men and far more than it does in terms of goods. The chips in the economic game today are not so much the physical goods and actual services that are almost exclusively considered in economic textbooks, as they are that elaboration of legal relations which we call property." Thus, Mr. Noyes has undertaken to inquire into the nature, the forms, and the functioning of these relations, to find out what they are and how they work. The present voluminous book is devoted entirely to the first part of this task, the "anatomy" of the legal institution called property. Another volume will follow, devoted to the description of the dynamics of its functioning. In, the final result the structure of property is visualized by Mr. Noyes as a complicated network of relations woven between the material (and certain quasi-material) objects to be used, enjoyed, and administrated upon and the human beings by whom these objects are used, enjoyed, and controlled. Between them threads go back and forth, indicating different modes of use, enjoyment, and control, and never connecting the people and the goods, but always leading through "funds," i.e., points of concentration corresponding to aggregates of relations. Each individual who shares in some respect in the enjoyment of the goods of the world has a personal "fund" of his own, from which, in the most simple form of the structure, relations may go immediately to the material objects. More frequently, however, the connection goes through some other "impersonal" fund (called in legal language corporation, or partnership, or foundation, or trust fund), from which, in turn, the threads run to the material objects, frequently, however, again not directly but through other impersonal funds. The structure becomes more complicated by the fact that beneficial use of and control over an object (or a relation finally leading to an object) may belong to different personal or impersonal funds of the same level. Finally, the relation which is legally called debt or claim appears as a particular kind of relation between funds, giving one fund an indirect share in the values constituting the other fund. The description of this intricate framework of relations occupies the last two chapters of the book.,