s of people who repudiate most
of the socialistic programme, this doctrine as to interest appeals as at
once just and practicable. If the state could appropriate all incomes
due to interest, as distinct from those which represent the product of
active ability, an enormous fund would, they think, be available for
general distribution, and the ideals of socialism, in so far as they are
practicable or desirable, might thus be realised by other than
socialistic means. This argument, likewise, will have its own
chapter--or rather two chapters--allotted to it.

The third of these arguments or proposals which, though not in
themselves socialistic, are popularly associated with socialism, relates
to equality of opportunity. To this also I will devote a separate
chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] While these pages were being corrected for the press, a number of
utterances have been made by English clerics--Episcopalian and
Nonconformist--precisely similar in purpose and spirit to those of the
author here quoted.

CHAPTER XII

THE JUST REWARD OF LABOUR AS ESTIMATED BY ITS ACTUAL PRODUCTS

Since the educated socialists of to-day admit that in the modern world
wealth is produced by two functionally different classes--a majority who
labour and a minority by whom this labour is directed; or by two
different faculties--namely, labour and directive ability--the question
of how much of the total product or its value is produced by one class
or agency, and how much by the other, is, for all social reformers, and
not for socialists only, a question of the first importance; for in the
minds of numbers, who care little about ideal transfigurations of
society, the doctrines of socialism leave one vivid conviction, which is
this--that, though the labourers in the modern world do not produce
everything, though the ability of those directing them is a productive
agent also, and though part of the wealth of modern nations is
undoubtedly produced by this, yet the men of ability produce much less
than they manage to keep, while the labourers produce much more than is
represented by the wages which they get; that labour in this way, even
if in no other, is suffering at present a general and intolerable wrong;
and that socialism is simply a system by which this wrong will be
righted.[18]

Now, this alleged wrong is essentially an affair of quantity. If the
products of any typical firm--one, let us say, which produces
chemicals--are represent