Again, another change takes place. Property remains of course property, but the ownership of property begins to spread out. The individual, instead of owning a very small share, more or less begins to own a very large share partly and thereafter becomes the co-sharer of a very large property and gets the benefit of that, although be is not complete master of it. So co-operative undertakings, so in a sense the joint-stock system, etc., began. So in a sense also spread the idea of an individual becoming a part owner as a member of a group of properties on a big scale which no single individual can ever hold except very rarely. In recent years the tendency has been for monopoly of wealth and property in a limited number of hands. This does not apply to India so much, because we have not grown so much in that direction. But where industrially countries have grown fast there has been monopoly of capital with the result that even the old idea of property and free enterprise is not easily applicable, because in the ultimate analysis the few persons who possess a large monopoly of capital really dominate the scene. They can crush out the little shop-keeper by their methods of business and by the fact that they have large sums of money at their command. Without giving the slightest compensation, they can crush him out of existence. The small man is crushed out of existence by the modern tendency to have money power concentrated in some hands. Thus the old conception of the individual owner of property suffers not only from social developments, as we see them taking place and from new conceptions of co-operative ownership of property, but from the development on the old lines when a rich man with capital can buy out the small one for a song.
