ignores the element of time. Some forms of effort are productive long after the effort itself has ceased.

For examples, royalties on an acted play. Such royalties herein typical of interest generally.

Industrial interest as a product of the forces of organic nature. Henry George's defence of interest as having this origin.

His argument true, but imperfect. His superficial criticism of Bastiat.

Nature works through machine-capital just as truly as it does in agriculture.

Machines are natural forces captured by men of genius, and set to work for the benefit of human beings.

Interest on machine-capital is part of an extra product which nature is made to yield by those men who are exceptionally capable of controlling her.

By capturing natural forces, one man of genius may add more to the wealth of the world in a year than an ordinary man could add to it in a hundred lifetimes.

The claim of any such man on the products of his genius is limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of abstract justice, the whole of it belongs to him.

Abstract justice, however, in a case like this, gives us no practical guidance, until we interpret it in connection with concrete facts, and translate the just into terms of the practicable.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SOCIALISTIC ATTACK ON INTEREST AND THE NATURE OF ITS SEVERAL ERRORS

The practical outcome of the moral attack on interest is logically an attack on bequest.

Modern socialism would logically allow a man to inherit accumulations, and to spend the principal, but not to receive interest on his money as an investment.

What would be the result if all who inherited capital spent it as income, instead of living on the interest of it?

Two typical illustrations of these ways of treating capital.

The ultimate difference between the two results.

What the treatment of capital as income would mean, if the practice were made universal. It would mean the gradual loss of all the added productive forces with which individual genius has enriched the world.

Practical condemnation of proposed attack on interest.

Another aspect of the matter.

Those who attack interest, as distinct from other kinds of money-reward, admit that the possession of wealth is necessary as a stimulus to production.

But the possession of wealth is desired mainly for its social results far more than for its purely individual results.

Interest as connected with the sustentation of a certain mode of social life.

Further consideration of the manner in which those who attack interest ignore the element of time, and contemplate the present moment only.

The economic functions of a class which is not, at a given moment, economically productive.

Systematic failure of those who attack interest to consider society as a whole, continually emerging from the past, and dependent for its various energies on the prospects of the future.

Consequent futility of the general attack on interest, though interest in certain cases may be justly subjected to special but not exaggerated burdens.

CHAPTER XV

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

Equality of opportunity, as an abstract demand, is in an abstract sense just; but it changes its character when applied to a world of unequal individuals.

Equality of opportunity in the human race-course. To multiply competitors is to multiply failures.

Educational opportunity. Unequal students soon make opportunities unequal.

Opportunity in industrial life. Socialistic promises of equal industrial opportunities for all. Each "to paddle his own canoe."

These absurd promises inconsistent with the arguments of socialists themselves.

A socialist's attempt to defend these promises by reference to employés of the state post-office.

Equality of industrial opportunity for those who believe themselves possessed of exceptional talent and aspire "to rise."

Opportunities for such men involve costly experiment, and are necessarily limited.

Claimants who would waste them indefinitely more numerous than those who could use them profitably.

Such opportunities mean the granting to one man the control of other men by means of wage-capital.

Disastrous effects of granting such opportunities to all or even most of those who would believe themselves entitled to them.

True remedy for the difficulties besetting the problem of opportunity.

Ruskin on human demands. Needs and "romantic wishes." The former not largely alterable. The latter depend mainly on education.

The problem practically soluble by a wise moral education only, which will correlate demand and expectation with the personal capacities of the individual.

Relative equality of opportunity, not absolute equality, the true formula.

Equality of opportunity, though much talked about by socialists, is essentially a formula of competition, and opposed to the principles of socialism.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SOCIAL POLICY OF THE FUTURE
THE MORAL OF THIS BOOK

This book, though consisting of negative criticism and analysis of facts, and not trenching on the domain of practical policy and constructive suggestion, aims at facilitating a rational social policy by placing in their true perspective the main statical facts and dynamic forces of the modern economic world, which socialism merely confuses.

In pointing out the limitations of labour as a productive agency, and the dependence of the labourers on a class other than their own, it does not seek to represent the aspirations of the former to participate in the benefits of progress as illusory, but rather to place such aspirations on a scientific basis, and so to remove what is at present the principal obstacle that stands in the way of a rational and scientific social policy.

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF SOCIALISM

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORICAL BEGINNING OF SOCIALISM AS AN OSTENSIBLY SCIENTIFIC THEORY

Socialism, whatever may be its more exact definition, stands for an organisation of society, and more especially for an economic organisation, radically opposed to, and differing from, the organisation which prevails to-day. So much we may take for granted; but here, before going further, it is necessary to free ourselves from a very common confusion. When socialism, as thus defined, is spoken of as a thing that exists—as a thing that has risen and is spreading—two ideas are apt to suggest themselves to the minds of all parties equally, of which one coincides with facts, while the other does not, having, indeed, thus far at all events, no appreciable connection with them; and it is necessary to get rid of the false idea, and concern ourselves only with the true.

The best way in which I can make my meaning clear will be by referring to a point with regard to which the earlier socialistic thinkers may be fairly regarded as accurate and original critics. The so-called orthodox economists of the school of Mill and Ricardo accepted the capitalistic system as part of the order of nature, and their object was mainly to