But modern knowledge has another issue to offer to thinking men. It tells them that in order to be rich they need not take the bread from the mouths of others; but that the more rational outcome would be a society in which men, with the work of their own hands and intelligence, and by the aid of the machinery already invented and to be invented, should themselves create all imaginable riches. Technics and science will not be lagging behind if production takes such a direction. Guided by observation, analysis and experiment, they will answer all possible demands. They will reduce the time which is necessary for producing wealth to any desired amount, so as to leave to everyone as much leisure as he or she may ask for. They surely cannot guarantee happiness, because happiness depends as much, or even more, upon the individual himself as upon his surroundings. But they guarantee, at least, the happiness that can be found in the full and varied exercise of the different capacities of the human being, in work that need not be overwork, and in the consciousness that one is not endeavouring to base his own happiness upon the misery of others.
These are the horizons which the above inquiry opens to the unprejudiced mind.
FOOTNOTE:
[198] These figures may be computed, for instance, from the data contained in “The Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labour of the United States, for the year 1893: Building and Loan Associations.” In this country the cost of a workman’s cottage is reckoned at about £200, which would represent 700 to 800 days of labour. But we must not forget how much of this sum is a toll raised by the capitalists and the landlords upon everything that is used in building the cottage: the bricks and tiles, the mortar, the wood, the iron, etc.
APPENDIX.
A.—BRITISH INVESTMENTS ABROAD.
The important question as to the amount of British capital invested in the colonies and in other countries has only quite lately received due attention. For the last ten years or so one could find in the “Reports of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue” a mention of the revenue derived from British capital invested in foreign loans to States and Municipalities and in railway companies; but these returns were still incomplete. Consequently, Mr. George Paish made in 1909 and 1911 an attempt at determining these figures with more accuracy in two papers which he read before the Statistical Society.[199]
Mr. Paish based his researches on the Income Tax, completing these data by special researches about private investments, which do not appear in the Income Tax returns. He has not yet got to the end of his investigation; but, all taken, he estimates that the yearly income received by this country from abroad from different sources reaches £300,000,000 every year.