he time to verify my recollection. I am a busy man and it
is no light thing to tackle Capital with intent to extract its precise
meaning. Multitudes who have tried it have failed. Perhaps I was one of
them. Of course Marx recognized the value of Labor other than manual,
but his appeal was to manual workers and it is mainly they who have
responded.]

[Footnote 3: Some of these counts would bear subdividing but they would
come out all right. Any syllogism will come out all right when you
assume the premises.]

*****

A CRITIQUE OF SOCIALISM

To the Ruskin Club

When your Mr. Bamford wrote me that the Ruskin Club was out hunting
trouble, and that if I would come over here the bad men of the club
would "do me up," I confess my first impulse was to excuse myself from
the proffered hospitality. In the first place, as I have never posed
as a social champion I had no reputation at stake and I was horribly
afraid. Secondly, while my reading of Socialist and Anti-Socialist
literature is the reverse of extensive, I am very sure that nothing can
be said for or against Socialism which has not already been said
many times, and so well said that a fair collection of Anti-Socialist
literature would make a punching-bag solid enough to absorb the force of
the most energetic of pugilists. Finally, the inutility of such a sally
presented itself forcibly, since there is, so far as I know, no record
of the reformation of a Socialist after the habit is once firmly
established. But while at first these considerations were all against
my putting on my armor, in the end the instinct of eating and fighting,
which is as forceful in the modern savage, under the veneer of
civilization, as in our unpolished progenitors, overcame all
considerations of prudence, and here I am to do battle according to my
ability. I promise to strike no foul blows and not to dodge the most
portentous of whacks, but to ride straight at you and hit as hard as I
can.

A Critique of Socialism

While it is doubtless true that no one can live in the world without
in some degree modifying his environment, it is also true that the
influence of a single person is seldom appreciable or his opinion upon
Social questions of sufficient importance to excite curiosity, but I
confess that when I listen to an address intended to be thoughtful, I
enjoy it more or at any rate endure it better, if I have some knowledge
of the mental attitude of the speaker toward hi