monopolists of
business ability, other than that supplied under the existing system by
the prospect of possessing wealth proportionate to the amount produced
by them, let us consider this motive in itself, as history and
observation reveal it to us.

And here in the presence of facts which no one seeks to deny, we shall
find that the socialists themselves are among our most interesting
witnesses, affording in what they assert a solitary and signal exception
to that looseness of thought and observation which is otherwise their
distinguishing characteristic. The motive here in question as ascribed
to the exceptional wealth-producer, the director, the man of business
ability--the motive which in his case the socialists propose to
supersede, but which is at present in possession of the field--commonly
receives from them the vituperative name of "greed." What they mean by
greed is simply the desire of the great wealth-producer to retain for
himself a share of wealth, not necessarily equal, but proportionate, to
the amount produced by him. And what have the socialists got to tell us
about greed, when they turn from their plans for superseding it in the
socialistic future to consider its operations in the actual past and
present?

They tell us a great deal. For what is, and always has been, their stock
moral indictment against the typical men of ability, the pioneers of
commerce, the capitalistic directors of labour, the introducers of new
inventions, the amplifiers of the world's wealth? Their chief indictment
against such men has been this--that their exceptional ability, instead
of being roused into action solely by the pleasure of benefiting their
fellow-men, has been utterly dead and irresponsive to every stimulus but
one; and that this has been personal greed, and personal greed alone.
Its influence, they say, is as old as civilisation itself, and was as
operative in the days when the prows of the Tyrian traders first
ploughed their way beyond the pillars of Hercules, as it is to-day under
the smoke-clouds of Manchester, of Pittsburg, and Chicago. Karl Marx
for example, in a very interesting passage written in England about the
time of the abolition of the Corn-laws, declared that the radical
manufacturers, who professed to support that measure on the ground that
it would secure cheap food for the people, were not moved in reality,
and were not capable of being moved, by any desire but that of lowering
the rate of wage