of the things we have to pay for the pleasure of the rascal's company. Now I think individualism strengthens the hands of the rogue in his fight with the true man; and I think socialism would fortify the true men against the rascals. I grant you that state socialism would imply some interference with the liberty of the individual. But which individual? The scoundrel. Imagine a dozen men at sea in a boat with only two days' provisions. Would it be wise to consider the liberty of the individual? If the strongest man took all the food and left the others to starve, would it be right or wrong for the eleven men to combine to bind him and divide all fairly? To let the strong or the cunning rob the weak or honest is individualism. To prevent the rascal from taking what is not his own is socialism.

CHAPTER XXIII.

LUXURY.

Dick Turpin is blamed-suppose-by some plain-minded person, for consuming the means of other people's living. "Nay," says Dick to the plain-minded person, "observe how beneficently and pleasantly I spend whatever I get!"

'Yes, Dick," persists the plain-minded person, “but how do you get it?"

"The question," says Dick, "is insidious and irrelevant."

Ruskin.

This woman, ambitious and vain, thinks to enhance her own value by loading herself with gold, with precious stones, and a thousand other adornments. In order to deck her in braver array the whole nation exhausts itself; the arts groan and sweat in the laborious service; the whole range of industry wears itself out.- Bossuet.

There is no country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the industrious. The idle everywhere consume a great part of it; and according to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between these two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either annually increase or diminish, or continue the same from one year to another. -Adam Smith.

In this chapter I shall deal with the subject of luxury, and shall

endeavor to make clear to you the fact that the luxury of the rich is a direct cause of the misery of the poor.

It is very important that you should understand this matter, for it has been often and grossly confused by the statements of foolish or dishonest men. It was held for a long time that the rich man in spending his money conferred a benefit upon the poor. This error has long since been abandoned even by most political economists, and is now only uttered by very ill-informed or unintelligent people. Among these is his grace the Duke of Argyll, who, in a letter to Mr. John Ogilvey, coolly says:

"But there are at least some things to be seen which are in the nature of facts, and not at all in the nature of speculation or mere opinion. Among these some become clear from the mere clearing up of the meaning of words such as the unemployed.' Employment in this sense is the hiring of manual labor for the supply of human wants. The more the servants are stimulated and multiplied the more widespread will be the inducement to hire. Therefore, all outcries and prejudices against the progress of wealth and of what is called luxury' are nothing but outcries of prejudice against the very sources and fountains of all employment. This conclusion is absolutely certain."

The italics are mine. The duke seems to suppose that the people can only live by hiring each other out to labor. He reminds me of Edward Carpenter's Island, "Where the inhabitants eked out a precarious living by taking in each other's washing." The duke is quite right in saying that the more the wants of the rich are stimulated the more employment there will be for the people. But as that can only mean that the more the rich devour and waste the harder the people will have to work, I fail to see that the "interests" of the people lie in stimulating the idlers to greater gluttony and extravagance. The fact is his grace, like Master Turpin in John Ruskin's dialogue, quoted at the head of this chapter, has omitted to explain how the rich get their money, and from whom they get it.

But the Duke of Argyll is not alone in his ignorance. The press we have always with us, and from pressmen, writing for large daily papers, I quote three statements, all false and all foolish.

The first is that "luxury of the rich finds useful employment for the poor."

The second that "the expenditure of the rich confers upon the poor the two great blessings of work and wages.”

The third that "a rich man cannot spend his money without finding employment for vast numbers of people who without him must starve."

These statements, you will see, all amount to the same thing,

The intelligent pressmen who uttered them supposed that the rich man spent his own money, whereas he really spends the money of other people; that he found useful work for a number of men, whereas it is impossible to find a man useful work in making useless things; and that the men employed by the rich must starve were it not for his help, whereas if it were not for his hindrance they would be all doing useful instead of useless work.

All the things made or used by man may be divided into two classes, under the heads of necessaries and luxuries.

I should include under the head of necessaries all those things which are necessary to the highest form of human life.

All those things which are not necessary to the highest form of human life I should call luxuries, or superfluities.

For instance, I should call food, clothing, houses, fuel, books, pictures, and musical instruments necessaries; and I should call diamond ear-rings, race-horses, and broughams luxuries.

Now, it is evident that all those things, whether luxuries or necessaries, are made by labor. Diamond rings, loaves of bread, grand pianos and flatirons, do not grow on trees. They must be made by the labor of the people, and it is very clear that the more luxuries a people produce the fewer necessaries they will produce.

If a community consists of ten thousand people, and if nine thousand people are making bread and one thousand are making jewelry, it is evident that there will be more bread than jewelry.

If in the same community nine thousand make jewelry and only one thousand make bread, there will be more jewelry than bread. In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear diamond rings on all their fingers.

In a well-ordered state no luxuries would be produced until there were enough necessaries for all.

Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and shelter. Had he neglected his goats and his raisins and spent his time in making shell-boxes he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack bread?

Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food for both.

Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What happens?

This happens-that the man who is left upon the land must

now work twelve hours a day. Why? Because, although his companion has ceased to grow grain he has not ceased to eat bread. Therefore, the man who grows the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the burden of the men who produce necessaries.

But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra labor. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half his grain; for there is no rich man.

Suppose next a community of three, one of whom is a landlord, while the other two are farmers. The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no work. What happens?

We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half. Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. to produce a day's keep for one, produce a day's keep for two. now work twice as long as before.

Well, if it takes a man six hours it will take him twelve hours to So that our two farmers must

But now the landlord has twice as much grain as he can eat. He therefore proceeds to spend it, and in spending it he "finds useful employment" for one of the farmers. That is to say, he takes one of the farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord. What is the effect of this? The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find food for all three, and in return gets nothing.

Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours. To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries pro'duced by the man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich

man.

The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and employs another man to help him to spend it.

We have here three classes:

1. The landlord who does no work.

2. The landlord's servant who does work for the benefit of the landlord.

3. The farmer who produces food for himself and the other two. Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into those three classes.

In my lecture on luxury I showed these things by diagrams. We will use a diagram representing a community of ten men supporting a figure representing ten men's food. Thus:

All the men represented here by stars are employed in making necessaries, and the figure they support is the amount of their labor.

Now what I want you to clearly understand is that although you take away one of those ten men and set him to other work you do not take him away from the consumption of food. He has still to be fed, and he must be fed by the men who produce food. Suppose, then, that we take away seven of our ten men; that we make one of them a chief, and six of them the chief's servants, the figure will be left thus:

TEN MEN'S FOOD.

***

The burden is the same, ten men's food; but the bearers are fewer.

C is a jeweler, and sets diamonds for B. Where does B get the money to pay him? he gets the money from A. It is clear, then, that A is keeping both B and C.

Now we are told upon the authority of Mulhall and Giffensee Fabian tract, "Facts for Socialists," price 5 cents-that the division of the national earnings is as follows:

Rent, £200,000,000; interest, £250,000,000; salaries and profits of middle-class, £350,000,000; wages of workers, £450,000,000. Total, £1,250,000,000.

The population is about 36,000,000. The annual income about £1,250,000,000. One-third of the people take two-thirds of the wealth, and the other two-thirds of the people take one-third of the wealth.

That is to say, that 24,000,000 of workers produce £1,250,000,000 of wealth, and give £800,000,000 of it to 12,000,000 of idlers and non-producers.

This means that each worker works one-third of his time for himself, and two-thirds of his time for other people.

This looks bad enough, but it is not the worst. Among the 24,000,000 of the working-classes there are vast numbers of nonproducers. There are millions of children and of women who produce nothing, and there must be millions of male "workers"