ffect.

A trader buys one thousand of a given article per month from the
manufacturer at ninepence an article and sells them to his customers at
tenpence. The extra penny is his payment for acting as purveyor, and the
customers recognise that it is an equitable charge which they pay
contentedly. That is honest trading; and the trader makes a profit of a
trifle over four pounds a month, or fifty pounds a year.

Another trader purveys the same article, buying it from the same
manufacturer, but owing to the possession of larger capital, better
talent for organisation, and more enterprise, he sells, not one
thousand, but one million per month. Instead of selling them at
tenpence, however, he sells them at ninepence half-penny; thereby making
his customers a present of one half-penny, taking to himself only one
half of the sum to which they have already consented as a just charge
for the services which he renders. Supposing that he pays the same price
as the other trader for his goods (which, buying by the million, he
would not do), he makes a profit of some L2083 a month, or L25,000 a
year. Evidently he grows rich.

This is the rudimentary principle of modern business; but because one
man becomes rich, though he gives the public the same service for less
charge than honest men, Mr. Wells says that he cannot be honest.

If two men discover simultaneously gold mines of equal value, and one,
being timid and conservative, puts twenty men to work while the other
puts a thousand, and each makes a profit of one shilling a day on each
man's labour, it is evident that while one enjoys an income of a pound a
day for himself the other makes fifty times as much. It is not only
obvious that the latter is just as honest as the former, but he can
well afford to pay his men a shilling or two a week more in wages. He
can afford to build them model homes and give them reading-rooms and
recreation grounds, which the other cannot.

Others, besides Mr. Wells, lose their heads when they contemplate large
fortunes made in business; but the elementary lesson to be learned is
not merely that such large fortunes are likely to be as "honestly"
acquired as the smaller ones, but also that the man who trades on the
larger scale is--or has the potentiality of being--the greater
benefactor to the community, not merely by being able to furnish the
people with goods at a lower price but also by his ability to employ
more labour and to surround his work