moderate fortunes are being absorbed in large, and these in those which are larger; intermediate distinctions and grades are being effaced and eliminated; riches and luxury are accumulating at one pole, and poverty and misery at the opposite; and the time is approaching when, unless capitalist-accumulation be arrested, there will be only a bloated mammonism confronting a squalid pauperism.

CHAPTER V.

SOCIALISM AND CAPITAL.

THE teaching of Socialism as to labour having been considered, we must now turn our attention to its doctrine concerning capital.

There is no portion of its teaching to which Socialists themselves attach greater importance. They trace to false views of the functions and rights of capital the chief evils which prevail in modern society. They rest all their hopes of a just social organisation in the future on the belief that they can dispel these false views and substitute for them others which are true. Socialists aim at freeing labour from what they regard as the tyranny of capital, and in order to attain their end they strive to expose and destroy the conceptions of capital which are at present dominant. This they consider, indeed, to be their most obvious and most urgent duty.

What is capital? It is a kind of wealth wealth which is distinguished from other wealth by the application made of it; wealth which, instead of being devoted to enjoyment, or to the satisfaction of immediate wants and desires, is employed in maintaining labour, and in providing it with materials and instruments for the production of additional

wealth. It is, in fact, just that portion or kind of wealth which, from its very nature, cannot but cooperate with labour. There is much wealth spent in such a way that the labouring poor may well be excused if they feel aggrieved when they see how it is expended. There are many wealthy persons among us whom Socialists are as fully entitled to censure as the Hebrew prophets were to denounce the "wicked rich," among their contemporaries. By all means let us condemn the "wicked rich;" but let us be sure that it is the "wicked rich," and only the "wicked rich," that we condemn.

Now, a capitalist may be wicked, but he is not wicked simply as a capitalist. Viewed merely in the capacity of a capitalist, he is a man who employs his wealth in a way advantageous to labour; who distributes the wealth which he uses as capital among those who labour. As a consumer of wealth the rich man may easily be an enemy of labour, but as a capitalist he must be its friend; and this whether he wish to be so or not. For capital attains its end only through co-operation with labour. Separated from labour it is helpless and useless. Hence, however selfish a man may be in character and intention, he cannot employ his wealth as capital without using it to sustain labour, to provide it with materials, to put instruments into its hands, and to secure for it fresh fields of enterprise, new markets, new acquisitions.

It seems manifestly to follow that those who seek the good of labour should desire the increase of capital. It appears indubitable that if the wealthy

could be persuaded to use more of their wealth as capital and to spend less of it in the gratification of their appetites and vanities; and if the poor could be induced to form capital as far as their circumstances and means allow, so as to be able to supplement and aid their labour in some measure with capital, the condition of the labouring classes would be improved; and, on the other hand, that to represent capital as the enemy of labour and the cause of poverty, and to discourage and impede its formation, can only tend to their injury. But obvious and certain as this consequence looks, Socialists refuse to acknowledge it. They labour to discredit capital, deny or depreciate its benefits, and urge the adoption of measures which would suppress the motives, or remove the means, essential to its preservation and increase.

There are Socialists who charge capital with doing nothing for production; who represent it as idle, inefficacious, sterile. They say labour does everything and capital nothing; and that, consequently, labour deserves to receive everything and capital is not entitled to receive anything.

Assuredly they are utterly mistaken. Manifestly the assistance given by capital to production is immense. Without its aid the most fertile soil, the most genial climate, the most energetic labour, all combined, will produce but little. By means of the capital which the people of Britain have invested in machinery they can do more work and produce more wealth, than all the inhabitants of the earth could do through the mere exertion of their unaided

muscles. Surely that portion of capital is not less efficacious than the muscular exertion required to impel and direct it. Deprived of the capital which is spent as wages, the most skilled workmen, however numerous and however familiar with machinery, are helpless.

Exactly to estimate the efficacy of capital, as distinct from that of the other agents of production, is indeed impossible; and for the very sufficient reason that it never is distinct from them, or they independent of it. Nature itself, when no capital is spent upon it, soon becomes incapable of supplying the wants of men, at least if they increase in number and rise above a merely animal stage of existence. The more labour advances in power and skill, the more industrial processes become complex and refined, the more dependent do labour and capital grow on the aid of each other. If the influence of capital then be, as must be admitted, incapable of exact measurement, that is only because it is so vast, so varied in the forms it assumes, so comprehensive and pervasive. It operates not as a separate and distinct factor of production, but in and through all the instruments and agencies of industry, supplying materials, making possible invention and the use of its results, securing extensive and prolonged co-operation, facilitating exchange by providing means of communication often of an exceedingly costly kind, and, in a word, assisting labour in every act and process by which nature is subdued and adapted to the service of humanity.

With every desire to deny or depreciate the