life in profusion around you. These things do not belong to you,
although you and your class have made them; they are so much wealth
which your masters have acquired from your unpaid labour, things which
you have produced, but for which you have never been paid, out of
which you have been swindled by the natural operation of the system of
wage-slavery of which you are the unconscious victim. From this
condition of things there is no escape while the whole of the people
do not own the means of production. Nothing but the abolition of the
class ownership of the means of life, and the substitution of
ownership of the whole people, will abolish this form of
slavery."[110]

The foregoing grievance is absurd. If regular work for a regular wage,
agreed upon by contract, is slavery, then all salaried men from the
Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor downward are also
"wage-slaves."

The Socialist agitator, after having told the working men that they
are no better off than negro slaves, then asks his hearers, as a rule:
"Why is it that the producers in this country are the poorest of the
population? Why is it that those who do not produce are the
richest?"[111] The manner in which this question is put suggests the
reply. Indeed, all Socialists agree in holding the rich responsible
for the poverty of the poor, as the following utterances will show:
"Socialism contends that the poverty of the poor is caused by robbery
on the part of the rich. The mansion explains the hovel. Belgravia has
its counterpart in Shoreditch. The factory, the foundry, the
ship-building yard account for the shooting lodge, the yacht, and the
tours in foreign lands. The long day's toil of one class renders
possible the life-long play of the other."[112] "If you have no
unemployed at the top of the social ladder you will have none at the
bottom."[113]

"The riches of the rich class are the cause of the poverty of the
masses."[114] "You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not
for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would
ride."[115] "Colossal poverty is the foundation of colossal wealth; he
who would eliminate the poverty of the masses assails the wealth of
the few."[116]

The foregoing arguments, or rather assertions, may sound very
convincing and may be exceedingly useful for propaganda purposes, but
they are disproved by facts. If the existence of the rich were the
cause of the poverty of the masses, the workers in count