Chapter IV. The Capitalist Thief

CHAPTER IV THE CAPITALIST THIEF IN the last chapter we saw that n1any essen tials to production have to be provided under whatever system production is carried on. Among these were raw materials, machinery, equipnlent of all kinds, a factory and a place to carry the work out, railways, ships, etc., to carry the product to market, the food and sub sistence of the workers during the time that elapses between the beginning of production and the sale of the product, and finally pro vision against the risk that the product when finished may not suit the views of the consumers who are asked to buy it. These essentials are provided by capital. Somebody with money in his pocket buys these things for industry instead of spending it on himself. Thus at first sight he seenlS fully to earn the interest and profit with which he is rewarded if, and only if, the services that he and his manager 61 62 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM render suit the views of the consuming public.

I t is therefore rather startling to find a con siderable school of thought which appears to regard the capitalist as a thief, and the capitalist system as one of organized robbery. In a book in favour of National Guilds called Self-Government in Industry, on page 235, Mr. G. D. H. Cole remarks: "To do good work for a capitalist employer is merely, if we view the situation rationally, to help a thief to steal more successfully." Other Guild champions are equally explicit. Messrs. Reckitt and Bechhofer in The Meaning of National Guilds allude to the cc felony of Capitalism" as if it were a self-evident truism. Mr. Cole is no street-corner. spouter, but a cultured and highly-educated writer, and some time a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. When such a man calmly assumes without attempting to argue the point that the capitalist ~s a thief, it is inevitable that many honest people who live on the interest of capital, without dreaming that they are doing anything wicked or dishonest, should feel themselves pulled up short by the question-. Are we .really thieves and parasites living on the labour of society without any right to the enjoyment of goods which we are consuming, ~nd, if so, THE CAPITALIST THIEF 63 what ought we to do? Let us look into this question.

Capital is usually described by economists as wealth devoted to production, that is to say, it consists of goods which are used not for inlmediate consumption, but in order to increase the productive power of the community and to earn interest or profit for those who own the capital. If a man earning £1,000 a year puts the whole of it into providing· hinlself with comforts and luxuries which his incolne enables him to enjoy, he does not increase his own capital, or the productive power of the com nlunity. If he puts aside £ 200 or £300 a .yearand invests it in industry, it means to. say that his wealth, instead of being immediately . consumed in the form of the pleasures of foreign travel, or the possession of a n10tor-car, or a billiard-room, or a lawn tennis court, contributes to the erection of a factory, or the opening up of a piece of land, or of the building of a rai1\vay or of a ship, so that the productive power of n1ankind is increased, or transport facilities are n1ade .cheaper and better. The production to which this saved wealth is thus applied is expected to yield a revenue to those who employ it, and usually does so. If it did not, peop'le would obviously leave off this applica64 THE CASE FOR ,CAPITALtiSM tion of wealth to the furtheran ce of industry.

But when there is a failure in production owing to some mishap by which the product has not turned out right, or does not suit the view of the consumers, the capital is lost and its owner receives no reward in the form of interest or profit. Nowadays, though a certain amount of capital is invested by its o","ners in businesses whlch they themselves conduct, the more usual channels in which capital is placed are invest ments in land or in the securities of Govern "nents and Municipalities or of Joint Stock Companies formed to carryon some enterprise. The income received by the capitalist consists of rent when the capital is placed in land, and of interest and dividends when it is placed in securities of Public Bodies or of COlnpanies. The question then which we have to consider is this: Is the rent and interest received by capitalists from their investment in land and securities a form of robbery by which they plunder the community?

Let us take the question of rent first, though I hope to show that the difference between rent and interest is one of degree and not of essence-they are merely different forms of payment to the owners of property for the use THE CAPITALIST THIEF 65 of it by those who need it. With regard to rent, an. interesting and incisive attack on it by Mr. Bernard Shaw is to be found in the first chapter of the Fabian Essays on Socialism. "Let us," he says, "in the manner of ~he political economist, trace the effects of settli~g a· country by private property with undisturbed law and order. Figure to yourself the vast green plain of a country virgin to the spade, awaiting the advent of man. Imagine then the arrival of the first colonist, the original Adam, d~veloped. by centuries of civilization into an Adam Smith, prospecting for a suitable patch of Private Property. A.dam is, as Political Economy fUQdanlentally assumes him to be, C on the make:' therefore he drives ·his spade into, and sets up his stockade around, the most fertile and favourably-situated patch he can find. . ... Other Adams come, all on the make, and therefore all sure to pre-empt patches as near as may ·be to. the first Adam's, partly because he has chosen the best situation, partly for the· pleasure of his society and con versation, and partly because where two men are assembled together there is a two-man power that is far Inore than double one-man power.. . . These Adams, too, bring their Cains and Abels, who do not murder one E 66 THE CASE lc~ORCAPITALISM another, but merely pre-empt adjacent patches,"

and. ·50 as the process of occupation goes on, and as new-comers.' still pour into the land, ,. there .isnothing ·for the new-comer to pre empt save soil of· the second· quality. Again, division. of labour sets in amongst Adam's neighbours; and with it, of course, com~s the establishment· of .a market for. the exchange of the products of their divided labour. Now it is riot well to be far afield from that market, becausedistanc~ from it ~involves· cost for roads', beasts of burden, time. . . . All this will be saved .to Adam at 'the centre, and incurred by the new-comer at the margin," and so Mr. Shaw estimates the annual value of Adanl's produce at £1,000, while the annual .. produce of the new-comer on the margin is £500, with equal industry on the part of,Adam.and~.the new-comer~, so here is a clear advantage of £ 500 a year to the first comer, which is economic 'rent. "The two men labour equally, and yet one gets £500 a year more~han the other· through the superior fertility of his land and convenience of its situation. . •.. Why should not Adam let, his patch to the new comer at 'rent of £500 a year ? Since th~ produce will be £ I ,000, the new··comer will have £500 left for himself, or as much as he THE CAPITALIST THIEF 67 can obtain by cultivating a patch of his own at the margin; and it is pleasanter, besides, to be in the (;entre of society than on the outskirts of it. The new-conler will hin1self propose the arrangement; and Adam may retire as an idle landlord with a perpetual pension of ·£500 rent. The excess of fertility in Adam's land is thenceforth recognized as rent,. and paid, as it is to-day, regularly by a· worker to a drone."

. Mr.· Shaw proceeds to a further development as inhabitants pour into the country until the outermost .. belt of free land is reached, upon which the yield to a man's ·year's labour is only £ 100. "Clearly now the rent of Adam's primeval patch has risen to £900, . since that is the excess ·of its produce over what is by this time all that is to be had rent-free. But Adam has yielded up his land for£soo a year to a tenant. It· is. this tenant accordingly who now lets Adam's patch for £900 a year to the new-·comer, .'who, of course, loses nothing by . the bargain, since it leaves him the £ 100 a year with which he must be content, anyhow. Accordingly he labours on Adam's land; raises £1,000 a year from it ;keeps£Io:J and pays £900 to Adanl's tenant,·. who pays. £500 .to Adam, keeping. £400 for himself, and thus.also becoming. an idle gentleman,· though with a somewhat sn)aller income than the man of.older family. It has, in fact, come to this, that the private property in Adam's land is 'divided between three men, the first .doing none of ·the work and gett'ing half the produce; the, second doing none of the work and getting two-fifths of the produce, and the third doing all the work and getting only one-tenth of the produce."

And then, later, when the land is al~ filled up, there comes in" a still further supply of new comers, U a man in a strange plight~one who wanders from snow-line to sea-coast in search of land, and finds nothing that is not the property of some one else . . . the first dis inherited son of Adam, . . . who is himself for the moment foodless, homeless, shiftless, superfluous and everything that turns ·a mall iJ}to a tramp or a thrall .. Yet he is ..•..ab~~ .. t'l., deal puissantly with l~nd, if only he could get . access to it.... What if the proletarian can contrive-invent--anticipate a new want-turn the land toso~e hitherto undreamt-of use wrest £1,500 a year from the soil and site that only yielded £1,OOQ;before? If he can do this, he can pay the full £ I,ooorent.and have an income of £ 500 left for himself. This is his p'rofit-therent of his ability-the excess of its produce oyer that of ordinary stupidity."

THE CAPITALIST THIEF 69 But there alsoconle other proletarians who are no cleverer than other men, who do as much but not more than they. In the mean time,· owing to division of labour, the use of tools and nloney. and the economies of civiliza tion, man's po,ver of extracting wealth from Nature is greatly increased, so that the produce of land on the margin of cultivation may rise considerably; if. we suppose the yield to -have doubled, then the proletarian who is· not clever ".canverywell offer to. cultivate the land, subject to a payment of, for instance, £1,600 a year, leaving himself £400 a year. This will enable the last - holder -of the. tenant right to . retire as an idle gentleman, receiving a net income of £700 a year, and a gross income of £1,600, out of which he-pays £gooa year rent io a landlord, who again pays to the head landlord £500." This picture, so ,- brilliantly drawn by Mr.

Shaw, is, of course, largely fanciful. In the first place, he begins by assuming, as quoted above, a country with undisturbed law and order, and a vast green plain virgin to the spade waiting the advent of man. But in fact countries are very. seldom. found under these comfort.ableconditions. 'fhey are much more likely to be found in the possession of savage 70 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM owners who very strongly object to the presence of the gentleman. who comes in with a spade and proposes ·to till them. They· are also very likely to be tenanted by more or less unplea sant wild beasts, snakes and other such fauna, while they are also likely to be encumbered with thick forests which have to be cleared before tillage is possible. Such are the dangers which the original pioneer .has, as a matter of fact, in most cases to face; ~ut .even if we follow Mr.Shaw'sexample,.and leave aU these unpleasantnesses out of account, the fact remains that the Adam who· settles down on the best patch in the country is the· pioneer. who leads the way into the wilderness, forsaking .the pleasant companionship of man. In Mr. Shaw's exanlple, his arrival is followed by a large nunlber of other peopl~who very quickly cure this defect in his surroundings, hut th.s by no means always happens, and it .is quite possible that the original pioneer is either killed with or without torture by the natives who resent his intrusion, oris eaten by wild beasts, or, after years of struggle with the natural difficulties of his position, dies of starvation owing to the failure· of his crops. If, on the contrary, things turn outas Mr. Shaw describes them, the fortunate prospector who hasbya TH.E CAPITALIST THIEF 71 stroke of luck, which is probably rare in actual life, found the very best piece of land in the "country for. his· original occupation, reaps a rewC!.rd from his judgment and the success with which he has overcome natural difficultiesand the sacrifices which he has made in facing the dangers and hardship of life in the wilderness, far from the pleasant companionship of his fellows. That l\1:r. Shaw's figures' are based rather on his imagination than on the facts which usually rule ina work-a-dayworld is a minor detail. It does not often,' I imagine, happen that a tenant who is. making £100 of actual profit, is paying an annual rent of £900.

Enough has been said to show that, even if all were as Mr. Shaw has described it, the owner of the fortunately-situated central patch has done something to earn the. rent which he derives from it, and so can hardly be classed as a parasite feeding on society, and giving nothing in return. for the goods \vhich he en joys. And those who came after him and shared his fortune were' also' pioneers and adventurers who made a sacrifice and took a risk. If such men must be dubbed thieves, thieves are people who are wanted. A year or two of pioneering ina wilderness might alter Mr. Shaw's view surprisingly.

72 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM Mr. Ramsay Macdonald in his' very interest ing little book ··onThe Soc-iatistzcMovement, one of the volumes of the Home University Library, gives another version of this criticism of rent as a charge on industry. On page 56, "Income from land," he says, "is not of the nature of reward .for services rendered. It used to be. Land was granted by the sove reign to his captains who, in return for their possessions, rendered military service to the state, and in addition paid certain taxes, so as to provide the king-who was the embodin1cnt of the state-with what incon1e he required." On page 159 he says that '~the type of un earned income· is rent. The Socialist· there fore propose to tax it, and when he is told that by doing so he is differenti~ting one kind of property from another, he replies that this is so, the reason being that landis differentiated from every other kind of property by its own nature. The aim of this tax· ·is to secure the economic re~t for the state, because it is the state that creates the value which economic rent represents." This is the argument on which those .depend \vho draw this difference between rent and interest, rent being ·in their opinion a profit which is made by the State, and ought to belong to the State, while interest THE CAPITALIST .THIEF 73 filay or may not have something to be said for it. Their argument, if I understand it right, is this, that rent be.ing the difference·.·in pro ductivepower between one piece of land and another, is not due to any exertions of the owner of it, apart of course from .Cloy 'improve ments \vhich the owner may have made, in which case they acknowledge that· he is entitled to interest on the capital which he has put into it. Otherwise it is simply a gift of nature in the greater fertility of the soil,or a· gift from the community which has made the land valu able by crowding in to want to live'upon it, or by establishing markets in its neighbour hood, so that its produce is more cheaply and profitably sold. In 'other words, rent is a present that is put into the pocket of the land owner, by the needs of the community, and so is socially created.

But is it not true that nearly all wealth, including even the wages of labour, is more or less socially created, and is not this distinc tive attribute of the rent of .land in fact shared by most of the payments which any comtnunity makes to its members? It nlay be quite true tnatcertairi lucky .landlord's "ha veohad·"untold wealth heaped upon them by being fortunate possessors of pieces of ground in London and 74 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM Manhattan Island. In other words, they have grown rich because there was a .community which ·wanted to enjoy and make use of a certain article of which they were possessed. But is not this also true in a greater or less degree of all of us who receive payments from our fellows in respect of work that we do, or property that we own? Owners of railways would certainly have built them in vain if there had not been. a community to travel on them and to send. goods over them. The barrister with a huge practice would not be able to earn his £20,000 a year if there were not a crowd of litigants with money to spend on the ex pensive luxury of justice. The journalist can only earn money from his pen if society has provided him with readers sufficiently educated to enjoy his views on current events~ Even Mr. Charlie Chaplin would smile in vain on a desert. island. The wage-earner only gets his wages· because there are employers who set him to work and consumers to absorb the product which his labour helps to produce.

Any of us who criticizes anyone else for the enjoyment of socially created wealth may easily cure himself of the vice of envy by wondering how much of the good things of the earth he could have himself enjoyed if he had been put THE CAPITALIST THIEF 75 down by himselfin a wilderness1with no society to create wealth for him. Nearly all wealth is in fact more or less socially created, just as it may ·also be said that most forms of· human soc.iety are to a great extent created by wealth or the desire to possess wealth. It is in fact, as has been pointed out by Locke in his Essay on C£vil£zatiolZ,for the purpose of the -mutual protection of their -lives and property that men. originally formed themselves into civilized societies. 1 Moreover, it will be noted that Mr. Mac donald in his analysis· of the origin of rent, which seems to be much closer to the-actual facts of the case than the sketch ·produced by Mr. Shaw's brilliantirnagination, shows that rent was originally earned by captains who were settled upon the land in return for military services. According to -him therefore the original owners of land received it in return for services rendered in the course of military occupation. M oclern opinion in its-revolt against views which we now stigmatize as Prussianistn or militarism may argue that this would not now be regarded as an equitable 1 Cf.. Plato,· Republic, Book II, "A State arises out of the needs of n1ankind ; no one is self-sufficing,but all of us have many wants. "-(Jowett's translation.) 76 THE CASE FOR CAPITA,LISM basis of possession. But we have no right to throw bac'kour modern views and expect, people many, centuries ago to act in accordance with them. If it can be shown that those who originally, acquired property did so by,carrying out what was then considered to be the business and duty of ClPubHc-spirited man, theIlthey surely earned their reward according ,to' the views which were theri'current. ',I~may be argued that, when feudal tenure ceased , and' arnlies were raised by different methods, tl1ose' who'l1ad ,held the 'land 'as a,:reward for military service ought to have been' m'adeto surrender' it or pay rent for it.to the State. But in, fact aU these arguments and imaginings about the' origin of various forJ11s,of,'property, 'in',theages 'when the world was first being settled~~ '~r conquered by ,invading hordes ,who seized' the property of its inhabitants,ate to a great, extent < irrelevant. , If land were still in the hand~ of the descend~ ants of the original pioneers". o.r, in 'the ,case' of -'~ngland, of, ,the descendants o( the Norman captai~s among whom Willia~ the Conq~eror parcelled o.ut the land, ·it might, thefl possibly be worth while to -enquire, in ,the l~ght of equity, into i the title ..deedsof these gentlemen. Bu~ we know that much of this 'property has changed THE CAPITALIST THIEF 77 hands· since ·they got it and is now in the hands of people who have invested the pro ceeds of their ·labour in it,. and is .in fact an ordinary investnlent, very difficult to distinguish from an investnlent .in Governntent securities or. those of industrial Companies. Even in the case of the great slices of English territory, granted ~by King Charles the Second to the mistresses who amused his leisure, it has . to be remembered·· that these fascinating ladies rendered a service in their time of •a kind which, according to views current .in those days, entitled them to any reward· that the caprices .of themonarchchosc. to shower upon them.

In all· times, and still" at the present, the ignorance and vice of the community, or of those members of it who happen to control claims faits wealth, have'showered .... and continue. to shower wealth upon totally un worthy objects. This is a disease which can only be cured by the education of the c0111munity to n1ake more judicious use of its power to decide, by the choice which it exercises in consumption, as. to whom it shall enrich. We cannot· now go back and say that. because society in the Middle Ages or at. the time .of the Restoration gave wealth: to the wrong 78 THE CASE f4"OR CAPITALISM people, we should now take it away again fronl their representatives, most of whom have paid for it with ,money earned by services rendered. But it most certainly is our business and duty to see that we do "not now put' riches into the hands' 'of those 'who' pander to our' ignorance and ,vice. Are we putting much successful energy into this duty?

There is perhaps ,some difference in the power,which investors in land have to charge others for theuse"of it as compared with that of' other forms of property from which interest and 'profit are earned. Competition is less free and multiplication is less possible, though as the rural landowners of England found to their,',cost in ,the latter half of ,the. nineteenth century, the development of transport, by bringing far-away:wildernesseswithin. reach for farming ,purposes, has extended the com petingarea enormously and will do'so, in future to an extent,perhaps,that we cannot-yet imagine. Even urban land is not quite' a monopoly. Owners of sites in'M;ayfairmay seem to be .able to dictate their own terms, but there· is a point at .which the community will refuse to pay their price and go to other abodes. Mr. RattisayMacdonald, in the book already quoted(page 58), says that the owner of land is THE CAPITALIST. THIEF 79 " in the position of a man who holds the keys of life, ·andhe .consequently can exact a maxi mum tolL as his price. He does so." Does he, under modern conditions,40Id the keys of life anymore than, for example, the coal miner? Does not competition in each case, when it is·allowed to work, come to the rescue of the consumer or tenant? If all the land were owned by one owner he might be able to exact the maximum toll. But it is not so, and competition between its owners gives a chance to those who want to hire it. And yet at the bottoln of the nlatter the fact that land was made by nature, while all other forms .of property ·owe .something to man's effort in their production and use, makes the receivers of rent especially liable to attack· when the rights of property are in question. Rent that is derived from work put into the .land is of course indis tinguishable from ordinary interest on capital.

But when it is paid just because a site is thought to .... be especially desirable by the community, or because somebody else has built a railway through it or near it, the case for special taxation of the increment is strong ; though that increment differs only in degree from the windfalls which are given, for example, to owners of stocks of black dress materials when 80 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM the Court suddenly and hurriedly goes into mourning. If, then, even the .capitalist who takes his income ,in'. the form of rent has a good deal to say for himself before he pleads ·guilty to the , c~arge of robbing the community. the capitalist who earns interest arid profit on other forms of investment has a stillstronger case. "Incomes," says Mr. Ramsay Macdonald (PClge 6I), "derived from invested capital are not so easy to classify. The Ricartlian dictum that all wealth is created by labour is not exactly true. I"t carries one nluchfurtherthan ,the statement which is true-that no wealth can be created without the service of labour.

But there is' much wealth which labour cannot create 'without the aid of capital. A man ,can go into the forest and tear boughs off trees with his hands .for his fires, but he cannot fell trees without an axe of some kind, whichiscapitaI. Capital, therefore, has its value, a simple fact which means that under the freest economic conditions, .interest will be paid. It. may be interest of 5 per cent., it may be of a tenth per cent.,bl;lt the utility of capital in production will always have ~n appreciable value which the labourer who uses it will pay without suffering exploitation or injustice. Interest is THE CAPITALIST THIE~F 81 therefore not of the nature ora monopoly toll. It is a payment for service rendered. Thi~we may call pure-interest. Risk may determine its amount, but· no consideration but this can justify· its existence." Thus the troubled capitalist ·who is won dering whether he is' really, a thief will be relieved to find that he is acquitted by Mr.

Ramsay Macdonald, a keen and uncompromis ing Socialist, of the charge made against him by Mr. Cole and the other Guildsmen. On the other hand, he is apparently condemned by Mr. Bernard Shaw in the chapter quoted above from the Fabian Essays. "If," he says, U a railw'ay is required, all tha.t is necessary is to provide subsistence for a sufficie.nt number of labourers to construct it. If, for example, the rail way •requires . the labour of a thous.and men for five years, the cost to the proprietors of 'the site is the subsistence of one thousand men for five years. This subsistence is techni cally called capital. It is provided for by the proprietors not consuming the whole excess over wages of .the produce of the labour of their other \vage-workers, but setting aside enough for the subsistence of the railway nlakers. In this way capital can claim to be the result of saving, or, as one ingenious F 82 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM apologist neatly put it, the reward of absti ..

nence---a gleam of humour which still enlivens treatises on capital. The savers, it need hardly be said, are those who have more money than they want to spend; the ab stainers are those who have less. At the end of' five years the completed ,railway is the property of the capitalists, and the railway makers fall back into.,the labour market as help~ less as they were before...... Colloquially, one property with a farm on it is said to be land yielding rent ; whilst another, with a railway on it, 'is called capital yielding interest. But. economically there is nO distinction' between thetnwhen they ohce become,' sources of revenue. This would be quite clearly seen if costly enterprises like a railway could be undertaken by a single landlord on his own land out of his own surplus wealth. It is the l)ecessityof combining a number of possessors of surplus wealth . . .. that ,modifies the term inology and external· aspect of' the exploitation.

But the modification is, not an alteration ; share holder, and landlord live alike on the produce extracted from their property by the labour of the proletariat." Again, a variation on the ,same theme was produced by Ruskin in ForsClav-igera, when THE CAPITALIST THIEF 83 he quotes, in the first letter, an example given in a Cambridge Manual of Political Economy of a carpenter called James who made himself a plane, so as to be able to earn more from his customers, but was then persuaded by a friend, William, to· lend the plane· to. hinl fora year. William· promised to give James at the end of the year a new plane exactly like the old one (for the rather surprising reason that the plane was certain to be worn out in the year), also a new plank as a compensation for the advantages of which James was to he deprived, by lending the plane instead of using·· it in his own business. "The plane," says Ruskin, "is the symbol of all capital, and the plank is the symbol of all interest. .. . Janles makes a plane, lends it to William on 1st January for a year. William gives hiina .plank for the loan of it, wears it out, and makes another for James, which he gives hinl on 31st December. On 1st January he again borrows the new one; and the arrangement is repeated continuously. "

This arrangement he holds up to scorn as being entirely unfair .to William. How will the ordinary capitalist feel after all this dose of condemnation? His withers will probably. be unwrung. He will see that in Mr. BernardShav/s exanlple the people who 84 THE CASE FOR CAPITAl.JSM paid· workers to build a 'railway, to .that extent refrained from ftivol()usand luxurious spend ing, and created a means of. transport which was or was not of benefit to· the community. If. it was not,. the community would not travel 011 it and they would lose their money. If it wa~, theyw~re entitled to renluneration for the .service that they provided.· The "labour of the proletariat," as Mr.ShawcaHs it, built the railway, ~nder thedirectien which the capital ists ..provided or paid for, in return for the pay which the capitalists put into their hands. Were they thereby" exploited" ?And would the manual workers 'havebeen as well off· as they are, if no capitalists .had ..equipped the world with railways andmachin~ry?

As to Ruskin's example, . th~capitalist will see that the lender of theplat1~.,did·the bor ·roweraservicehyJending ··him..a tool which would helphin1 in his work, and was fully entitled to a reward in the shape ofa plank and the return of his plane or its replacement by a ·new one if it had been worn out. Did Ruskin mean that he should have given the plane, which he .hadmade to help .his. own work, to the borrower who wanted· it to help his? Ifwe are all to give everything to every body else, it will be a very nice and altruistic .

THE CAPITALIST .THIEF 85 state of affairs, but ,vill it not lead, to industrial chaos rather than progress? Moreover, if the uncomfortable capitalist pursues his study of Fors Clavigerahe will find on a later page that a logical but not too tactful' correspondent wrote and asked Ruskin how, with his views on capital, he justified hiso\vn action in living on money left by his father, and that Ruskin's reply was most unconvincing and irrelevant. And naturally, for though the capitalist who is such by reason of his own .workand saving can. laugh at those who call him a thief, the inheritor of the results of his effort is not in nearly such a strong position. lIe knows that he did not steal his imtTIunity· from the economic problem that faces most of us, of working or else suffering. penury, because it was given or left to him by someone who earned it. But he .11layweU ask himself whether it is' equitable that such a great advantage, involving such a great handicap to others, should be handed on from one generation to another. He ,viIl appease himself probably with the .reflection that if property could not be-passed on,agreatincel1tiv~:Jo pro<1uc~iq1.1, and progress would be lost. If the venturers and organizers could not. hand on their pro-' perty to their heirs most of them woulc1, 86 THE CASE FOR CAPITALISM possibly and even probably, give less time·and energy to enterprise, and there would bea clog on the wheel of the industrial chariot. But on this subject there has in the. last few years been a great change in opinion" and I lately ,heard that· a distinguished American banker had expressed a doubt as to whether he would be wise to leave· his children with more than $5,000 a year-a quite moderate inconle from an American point of view in these days. In any case, the inheritor may also remember that the' State shows an increasing tendency to take toll on estates passing at death, and, in this country, now seizes no less than 40 per cent.

of the largest properties when their owner dies. As long as it does not check enterprise and the accumulation of capital this determination of the State seems to' be ,both equitable and expedient, and to be in the interest even of those who seenl. to suffer by it, but actually are therebYsandto that extent, compelled to justify their existence by their own efforts and saved from a possible life of idle boredom. So far, then, from the capitalist being a thief, he seems to render, or represent some one who has rendeJ;'ed, a service to the commu nity .without which economic progress would be impossible. In fact we may SC\Y that any TH·E CAPITALIST THIEF 87 one who is able to be a capitalist, by spending something on the equipnlent of industry, and fails to do so, checks the clock of tnaterial progress. If we are going to throw uglyworqs like (( thief" about,. we should with morejustice thr<?w them at the self-indulgent spender than at the capitalist who leaves the world richer and better equipped than h~· found. it.