t the unthrifty quite as much as the thrifty. But if
the promised doubling of wages should not take place, what will
happen? The Socialist agitators will explain that they are sorry to
have made a mistake, whilst the thriftless are squandering the
property of the thrifty.

According to the Socialist teachings, the capitalist is a perfectly
useless being in the national household. "Does he himself want to
work: to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him;
his money makes money, as the saying is."[448] Most capitalists--and I
think the large majority of wage-earners are capitalists to some
extent--are engaged in useful productive work of hand or brain.
However, the capitalist of the Socialist imagination, the wealthy man
who lives without any work, who studies the money market and Stock
Exchange quotations, and who is occupied solely in investing and
reinvesting his money to the best advantage, is an extremely useful
member of society. It is of the utmost consequence to all workers, and
to the whole nation, that the national capital should grow, that
mines, railways, ships, machinery, houses, &c., should multiply and be
constantly improved. Now the thrifty, not the wasteful, preserve and
increase the national capital. Wise and cautious capitalists in
enriching themselves will enrich the nation. Careless ones will lose
their money and impoverish the nation. The wealth of France has, to a
very large extent, been created by cautious and far-seeing _rentiers_,
and thus France has become the banker among nations.

Socialists teach that the wealth of the few causes the poverty of the
many; that therefore the private capitalist should be destroyed. Why,
then, are the workers most prosperous in those countries which possess
the wealthiest capitalists, such as France and the United States, and
why are they poorest in countries, such as Turkey and Servia, where
wealthy capitalists do not exist? And may not the destruction of the
capitalists reduce Great Britain to the level of Turkey and Servia?

FOOTNOTES:

[430] _Socialism Made Plain_, p. 9.

[431] _Capital and Land_, pp. 5, 6.

[432] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 11.

[433] Blatchford, _The Clarion Ballads_, p. 9.

[434] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 2.

[435] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 17.

[436] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 11.

[437] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 11.

[438] Joynes,