I want you to think over these things, friend Jonathan. Don't be afraid to do your own thinking! If you have time, go to the library and get some good books on the subject and read them carefully, doing your own thinking no matter what the authors of the books may say. I suggest that you get W.J. Ghent's Mass and Class to begin with. Then, when you have read that, I shall be glad to have you read Chapter VI of a book called Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles. It is not very hard reading, for I wrote the book myself to meet the needs of just such earnest, hard-working men as yourself.
I think both books will be found in the public library. At any rate, they ought to be. But if not, it would be worth your while to save the price of a few whiskies and to buy them for yourself. You see, Jonathan, I want you to study.
IV[ToC]
HOW WEALTH IS PRODUCED AND HOW IT IS DISTRIBUTED
It is easy to persuade the masses that the good things of this world are unjustly divided—especially when it happens to be the exact truth.—J.A. Froude.
The growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, wasteful and wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to be, has been matched step by step by a deepening and deadening poverty, which has left whole neighborhoods of people practically without hope and without aspiration.—Bishop Potter.
At present, all the wealth of Society goes first into the possession of the Capitalist.... He pays the landowner his rent, the labourer his wages, the tax and tithe-gatherer their claims, and keeps a large, indeed, the largest, and a constantly augmenting share of the annual produce of labour for himself. The Capitalist may now be said to be the first owner of all the wealth of the community, though no law has conferred on him the right of this property.... This change has been effected by the taking of interest on Capital ... and it is not a little curious that all the lawgivers of Europe endeavoured to prevent this by Statutes—viz., Statutes against usury.—Rights of Natural and Artificial Property Contrasted (An Anonymous work, published in London, in 1832).—Th. Hodgskin.