rris Hillquit, called _Mr. Mallock's "Ability,"_ and read it
carefully. It costs only ten cents--and you will get more amusement
reading the careful and scholarly dissection of Mallock than you could
get in a dime show anywhere. If you will read my own reply to Mr.
Mallock, in my little book _Capitalist and Laborer_, I shall not think
the worse of you for doing so.

Now, let us look at the division of the wealth. It is all produced by
labor of manual workers and brain workers applied to natural objects
which no man made. I am not going to weary you with figures, Jonathan,
because you are not a statistician. I am going to take the statistics
and make them as simple as I can for you--and tell you where you can
find the statistics if you ever feel inclined to try your hand upon
them.

But first of all I want you to read a passage from the writings of a
very great man, who was not a "wicked Socialist agitator" like your
humble servant. Archdeacon Paley, the great English theologian, was
not like many of our modern clergymen, afraid to tell the truth about
social conditions; he was not forgetful of the social aspects of
Christ's teaching. Among many profoundly wise utterances about social
conditions which that great and good teacher made more than a century
ago was the passage I now want you to read and ponder over. You might
do much worse than to commit the whole passage to memory. It reads:

"If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and
if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking
just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see
ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap,
reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse,
keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps
worst, pigeon of the flock, sitting round and looking on, all
the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and
wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the
rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly
flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see
this, you would see nothing more than what is every day
practised and established among men.

"Among men you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping
together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one, too,
oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the set, a child, a
woman, a madman or a fool), getting nothing for t