who are engaged in producing suprrfluities. Canon Girdlestone, in his pamphlet, "Society Classified," says:

"It has been shown (by Alexander Wylie, in his "Labor, Leisure, and Luxury") that, even if we give a liberal extension of meaning to the terms "necessaries" and "comforts" of life, so large a proportion as four-elevenths of the entire working population of this country are engaged in producing what, in contradistinction to the above, must properly be classified as "luxuries," i. e., commodities, etc., such as to healthy minds in healthy bodies are the merest superfluities. And if, as probably is the case, most of these embodiments of the "services" (or, as Dr. Thring calls them, "the stored-up life") of others are purchased by "non-workers," and paid for in "money" only, the bad effect of the transaction taken as a whole cannot be trifling or contemptible!

I should very much like to see society classified. If it were classified, and the number producing necessaries and the number producing luxuries were clearly shown, I think we should find that every adult male now engaged in producing necessaries is supporting about twenty people.

My Lady Dedlock "finds useful employment " for Crispin, the shoemaker. She employs him to make court slippers for her. Let us examine this transaction.

First, where does my lady get her money? She gets it from her husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from the agricultural laborer, Hodge.

Then she employs Crispin to make court slippers, and pays him with Hodge's money.

But if Crispin were not employed making shoes for my lady he would be making boots for Hodge, or for the children of Hodge. Whereas, now, Hodge cannot buy boots because he has no money, and he has no money because my Lady Dedlock has taken it.

Or my lady orders a silk ball dress from Mrs. Mantilini. For this also she pays with money earned by Hodge, and meanwhile what kind of an old rag is worn by Mrs. Hodge?

Again, as bearing on this question of my Lady Dedlock's finding useful labor. I quote from a letter on the "Scarcity of Dairymaids," in the Pall Mall Gazette. Dairymaids are wanted, and dairymaids cannot be found. Then again a northern factor says in The North British Agriculturist that he cannot get dairymaids, though he offers £22 a year and board. The writer in the Pall Mall asks:

"What would the 'special commissioner' say about 'Life in our Villages' if the £10,000,000 we paid last year for foreign butter, the £4,000,000 for cheese, the £4,000,000 for margarine,

and the £4,000,000 for eggs, had been kept at home, giving employment to thousands-tens and hundreds of thousands-of our own countrymen and women, instead of foreigners?"

Don't you think it would be an improvement if some of the "usefully" employed domestic servants and milliners, weavers spinners, and flower girls in the pay of Lady Dedlock were set to work to save the £22,000,000 spent on foreign dairy produce, because there are no hands here to produce these needed things?

Let us try to get an idea of the cost of some of those luxuries which the Duke of Argyll defends.

A couple of years back a lady was summoned to the county court for refusing to pay £90, a year's rent, to a furrier for the storage of her furs. The furs were valued at £6,000.

To provide those furs a number of workers, including trappers, hunters, curers, sailors, merchants, and shop-men had been "employed. Supposing that each of these people was paid at the rate of £2 a week, that means—

The labor of one man at £2 a week for 3,000 weeks. Which means that sixty years of working life had been spent on the furs. Now, taking twenty years as the average duration of a man's working life, we find that an amount of time equal to the working lives of three men had been lost to the nation for the sake of an idle woman's vanity.

We read, quite commonly, that at Lady Smalltork's reception the cut flowers used for decoration cost £1,000. Estimate the average wages of all the people engaged in growing and carrying the flowers at £1 a week, we find that the sum reaches a thousand weeks, or twenty years, that is the equivalent of the whole labor of a man's life spent in finding flowers with which to decorate an idle woman's room for one night.

Take a larger instance. There are mansions in England, ducal mansions, which, in building and decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.

Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of such a house at 30s. a week. We shall find that the mansion has "found employment" for 160 men for 20 years. Now while those men were engaged on that mansion they produced no necessaries for themselves. But they consumed necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the same people who found the money for the duke to spend. That is to say that the builders were kept by the producers of necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the builders' keep with money which they, the producers of necssaries, had earned for the duke.

The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had been compelled to support one hundred and sixty

men, and their wives and children, for twenty years; and for what? That they might build one house for the occupation of one idle man.

If this should meet the eye of his grace the Duke of Argyll, he will perhaps be able to see that he has made a slight mistake in telling the workers to stimulate the wants of the rich.

There was once a wise man who said the happiness of a people consists not in the abundance of their riches, but in the fewness of their wants.

His grace of Argyll has found us a new reading. The happiness of a people consists in the multitude of their wants.

I should advise the people to devote all their labor to satisfying their own wants; not to stimulating the wants of others. Men cannot exist upon wants; they exist upon food. And it is simple enough, even for a duke to see, that the more wants a people have the harder will they have to work to supply them. And when one class cultivates the wants and the other class labors to satisfy them, why

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What a lot of foggy thinkers there are in the world, to be sure. Just look for a moment at this pamphlet. It is called "The Functions of Wealth," and is by W. H. Mallock. Here is a pretty sentence:

"That wealth, which is envied by so many, and which is looked upon doubtfully by so many more, so far from being the cause of want among thousands, is at this moment the cause of the non-starvation of millions."

Which means that it is the rich idlers who keep the working poor, and not the working poor who keep the idle rich.

Mr. Mallock, in another place-he is explaining that it is an error to think one man's wealth is another's want-says:

"Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which a rich man of taste pays two thousand pounds. The cabinet is of value to him for reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it. Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish laborer's cottage, and it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands only to the man who can enjoy it."

There are two The first is that

Now, isn't that a precious piece of nonsense? things to be said about that rich man's cabinet. it was made by some workman who, if he had not been so em

The

ployed, might have been producing what would be useful to the poor. So that the cabinet has cost the poor something. second is that a priceless buhl cabinet can be divided. Of course, it would be folly to hack it into shavings and serve them out among the mob; but if that cabinet is a thing of beauty and worth the seeing, it ought to be taken from the rich benefactor, whose benefaction consists in his having plundered it from the poor, and it ought to be put into a public museum where thousands could see it, and where the rich man could see it also if he chose. This, indeed, is the proper way to deal with all works of art, and this is one of the rich man's greatest crimes—that he keeps hoarded up in his house a number of things that ought to be the common heritage of the people.

Every article of luxury has to be paid for, not in money, but in labor. Every glass of wine drunk by my lord, and every diamond star worn by my lady, has to be paid for with the sweat and the tears of the poorest of our people. I believe it is a literal fact that many of the artificial flowers worn at court are actually stained with the tears of the famished and exhausted girls who make them.

It is often asserted that the capitalist is as necessary to the laborer as the laborer is to the capitalist, and we are asked, therefore, How are we going to do without the capitalist?

This question is based upon a confusion of thought as to the meanings of the two terms, capital and capitalist.

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The pope in his encyclical falls into this muddle. the labor question as "The problem of how to adjust the respective claims of capital and labor." But to talk about the respective claims of capital and labor is as absurd as to talk about the respective claims of coal and colliers, or engines and enginedrivers.

There is a vast difference between capital and the capitalist. Capital is necessary; but capitalists are not necessary.

What do we mean by the word capital? There are many definitions of the word. But it will suffice for us to say that capital means the material used in the production and distribution of wealth. That is to say, under the term capital we include land, factories, canals, railways, machinery. and money. But the capitalist is not capital. He is the person who owns capital. He is the person who lends capital. He is the person who charges interest for the use of capital.

This "capital" which he lends at usury! He did not produce it. He does not use it. He only charges for it. Who did produce the capital? All capital is produced by labor. Who does use the capital? Capital cannot be used except by labor.

To say that we could not work without capital is as true as to

say that we could not mow without a scythe. To say that we could not work without a capitalist is as false as to say that we could not mow a meadow unless all the scythes belonged to one man. Nay, it is as false as to say that we could not mow unless all the scythes belonged to one man, and he took a third of the harvest as payment for the loan of them.

Instances: There is valuable capital in the British telegraphs; but there is no capitalist. The telegraph is a socialistic institution. The state draws the revenues from the people, and the state administers the work. In our state departments, the municipal departments, there is much capital, but there are no capitalists. The manager of a mine is necessary, the owner of a mine is not necessary; the captain of a ship is useful, the owner of a ship is useless.

These are undeniable proofs, as are the roads we walk on, and the lamps that light our way, that "capital" and "capitalists are not convertible terms.

Mr. Hart, in his pamphlet on Constitutional Socialism, puts the case against the capitalist very clearly. He says:

"The practicability of socialism can nevertheless be demonstrated by the present practical working of huge institutions in commerce, industry, and agriculture, which are gradually ruining many smaller ones. These enterprises derive their capital either from a gigantic capitalist or from a lot of shareholders, who know nothing about the business themselves, and who simply pay managers and clerks or manual workers to do the work for them. Now, whether there are 8,000 of these shareholders in a country, or 80,000, or 8,000,000, that does not affect the question, which is: Can shareholders find managers to produce, transport, and sell wealth for them? Ar wer: Yes, as it is being done at present.

"Moreover, if it is practical for these managers and their dependents to conduct business in a state of competition, with the risk of being ruined by the intrigues or inventions of their rivals, a fortiori would it be practical for such managers and dependents to conduct business when this risk no longer existed, and when they had simply to produce a certain number of goods, according to the demand, and then to transport these goods to shops or stores for sale?"

And so much for the question of how can labor dispense with capitalists. One more question, and I may conclude this chapter: Will not the spread of socialistic ideas tend to alarm the capitalist, and so cause him to take his capital out of the country? Take his capital out of the country! He might take himself out of the country, and he would doubtless take all the portable