ry. Routineers can always be
replaced, and replaced with profit, by educated functionaries.
Consequently when the employers threaten us with emigration, our only
regret as to the majority of them is that it is too good to be
true."[472] "Supposing those who have the money were to threaten to
leave the country and to take their money with them, would not that
upset your plans? Money is not wealth. You would have cause to
rejoice. So would the country which was fortunate enough to see its
capitalists emigrate."[473]

According to the Socialist teaching, the workers maintain the
capitalists. The brain is mightier than the hand, though the brain
requires the hand. In reality it rather seems that the capitalists
maintain the workers. It cannot too often be pointed out that those
countries which have many wealthy capitalists are highly civilised and
prosperous, and their workers are well off. On the other hand, those
countries which have few or no wealthy capitalists are little
civilised and poor, and their workers are exceedingly badly off. The
masses may conceivably rob the capitalists of their property, and try
to manage the national capital themselves, but whether they will
benefit by spoliation remains to be seen. Lacking direction,
foresight, unity, organisation, discipline, and thrift, the masses
will probably quickly waste the national capital, and national ruin
and distress and starvation will be the consequences of wholesale
robbery.

The confiscation experiment has often been tried in the past, and it
has always failed. The last time it has been tried was at the time of
the French Revolution. The money secured by robbery was recklessly
squandered. Production was neglected, and the people became poorer
than ever. In the country agriculture came to a standstill, weeds grew
where corn had been growing, gardens became a natural wilderness, and
wolves roamed in thousands.[474] The great manufacturing towns were
dead, manufacturers in Paris who had employed sixty or eighty men
employed but ten.[475] The people in town and country were starving.
Many lived on roots and bark. Many of the poor in Paris waited outside
the slaughter-houses and lapped the blood from the gutters like dogs.

Private capital has existed in all countries and at all times, because
it is a plant of natural growth. One can destroy it, but it will ever
grow again.

FOOTNOTES:

[449] Snowden, _Socialist Budget_, p. 1.

[450] _Ibid._

[451] S