It is this very fact—that want appears where productive power is greatest and the production of wealth is largest—that constitutes the enigma which perplexes the civilized world, and which we are trying to unravel. Evidently the Malthusian theory, which attributes want to the decrease of productive power, will not explain it. That theory is utterly inconsistent with all the facts. It is really a gratuitous attribution to the laws of God of results which, even from this examination, we may infer really spring from the mal-adjustments of men—an inference which, as we proceed, will become a demonstration. For we have yet to find what does produce poverty amid advancing wealth.
[BOOK III.]
THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION.
CHAPTER I.—THE INQUIRY NARROWED TO THE LAWS OF DISTRIBUTION—NECESSARY RELATION OF THESE LAWS.
CHAPTER II.—RENT AND THE LAW OF RENT.
CHAPTER III.—INTEREST AND THE CAUSE OF INTEREST.
CHAPTER IV.—OF SPURIOUS CAPITAL AND OF PROFITS OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR INTEREST.
CHAPTER V.—THE LAW OF INTEREST.
CHAPTER VI.—WAGES AND THE LAW OF WAGES.