Helm gave him the sheet of paper and Sayler read in Helm’s minute hand this series of notes:
Luxurious idlers.
Ladies and gentlemen. The more of them we have the poorer we become.
Proof:
Comfort means wealth and leisure to enjoy—that is, comfort in the lady and gentleman’s sense of the word.
Leisure to enjoy means little or no labor.
But wealth can be created only by laboring; wealth is nothing but the proceeds of labor.
Therefore,
To have comfort, in the lady and gentleman sense, in the sense in which our new luxury-mad upper class is determined to have it, means that one must “appropriate”—that is, steal—the proceeds of the labor of others.
First corollary: That the more “comfortable” the upper class becomes, the more of the proceeds of the labor of others it must be stealing.