nity--and as an example of such opportunity already in existence,
he mentioned the cash-credit system, which prevails in banks in
Scotland. He seemed unaware that such advances of capital made in this
system are made to picked men only. These men, moreover, have the
strongest stimulus to effect in the face that they will keep all their
profits. If a socialistic state gave cash-credits to everybody, it would
confiscate all the profits if the workers were successful, and have no
remedy against them if they failed.

[29] _Unto This Last._

[30] See note to previous chapter, referring to the recent _Red
Catechism_ for socialist Sunday schools, in which children are taught,
as the primary article of faith, that the wage-earners produce
everything, that the productivity of all is practically equal, and that
all are entitled to expect precisely the same kind of life.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SOCIAL POLICY OF THE FUTURE

I was constantly asked by socialists in America whether I really
believed that society, as it is, is perfect, and that there are no evils
and defects in it which are crying aloud for remedy. Unless I believed
this--and that I could do so was hardly credible--I ought, they said, if
I endeavoured to discredit the remedy proposed by themselves, to suggest
another, which would be better and equally general, of my own.

Now, such an objection, as it stands, I might dismiss by curtly
observing that I did not, and could not, suggest any remedy other than
socialism, partly because the purport of my entire argument was that
socialism, if realised, would not be a remedy at all; and partly
because, for the evils that afflict society, no general remedy of any
kind is possible. The diseases of society are various, and of various
origin, and there is no one drug in the pharmacopoeia of social reform
which will cure or even touch them all, just as there is no one drug in
the pharmacopoeia of doctors which will cure appendicitis, mumps,
sea-sickness, and pneumonia indifferently--which will stop a hollow
tooth and allay the pains of childbirth.

But though such an answer would be at once fair and sufficient, if we
take the objection in the spirit in which my critics urged it, the
objection has more significance than they themselves suspected, and it
requires to be answered in a very different way. Socialism may be
worthless as a scheme, but it is not meaningless as a symptom.
Rousseau's theory of the origin of society, o