"Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbor's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it, and the art of making yourself rich . . . is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor."

The poorer the neighbor, the more powerful is the rich man. The contrast between the poverty of the poor and the riches is the measure of the power that the rich can exercise over the poor. The greater the contrast, the greater the power of the rich.

Were riches absolute, people might be both rich and happy. Thus, if every man who had a million were rich, and if no one, by any possibility, could get more than a million, then the rich could cease to strive when he reached the million mark, and be a satisfied man. Riches are not absolute, however. The man with a million is not rich so long as there is a man with a hundred million living across the street. Furthermore, even if the man with a million is the richest man in the community, there is the constantly impending probability that someone else may get two millions, and the possessor of one million strives as ardently as ever to keep ahead in the riches game.

Furthermore, since riches is as important for its power over the poor as it is for its supremacy among the rich, the rich man strives for more riches in order that he may have more power.

The phrase "drunk with power" describes accurately the state of the man who is forging ahead in the wealth-game. Riches is a social stimulant, more exhilarating then champagne. It is more deadly, too, because it gets a stronger grip on its victims and holds them more surely. The love of riches is the most consuming passion in the world. It grips all alike-young and old; weak and strong. It is for this reason that the Teacher exclaims, "How hard it is for them that trust in riches to enter into the Kingdom of God!" The riches block their path and the more they have the greater obstacle do they become. Instead of mounting to a heaven of happiness and satisfaction on the mountain of his riches, the rich man is crushed by them into a hell of taunting oblivions from which even the gilded monuments that he erects cannot save him.

10. The Maximum Inequality

Unless riches carry with them power over men, they are meaningless. No rich man would hold title to mines, steamship lines or metropolitan real estate unless they gave him this power.

A man owns a great estate on which there is a splendid mansion, fine stables, houses, cattle, orchards, fertile fields. One day a pestilence kills

off the men and women who have been working on the estate. There are no more servants to be had, and the owner decides to keep up the property himself. What does he discover? That if he is a good workman, well equipped with up-to-date tools, his own efforts will maintain from one to five acres of land in a state of high cultivation, while the mansion, the stables and the rolling fields grow up to briers and thickets, and in a decade become a wilderness. The estate that one man can work is small indeed. Only when he can persuade others to accept a part of his riches in return for their services can he expect to be rich.

The operation of each pice of industrial property depends upon the same principle. Of what use are railroads, steel mills, sugar refineries and silver mines unless someone can be found who is willing to pay a bonus (rent or interest) for the privilege of working there?

Dives has assumed, absurdly enough, that he was conferring a favor when he allowed another to set his table. Unless there were some other than Lazarus to accept his pay and set his table, he would have no feast.

Note the conclusion to which this argument leads: "What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially power over men; . . . And this power of wealth, of course, is greater or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to

the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price for an article of which the supply is limited. . . So that, as above stated, the art of becoming 'rich,' in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbors shall have less. In accurate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favor."s

The art of becoming rich is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our favor." Study that sentence carefully. Compare it with the ethical codes commonly accepted by the Christian world, or the Pagan either, for that matter, and note the monstrous chasm that yawns between "the maximum inequality in our favor," and "do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Riches are of value only when they will command the time and energy of another. The rich are rich because others are poor and in proportion as others are poor; the art of getting rich is the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our favor. This is the heaven of the rich that has been built on the hell of the poor. Here endeth the journey through Paradise. Thinking back over it all, do you wonder that Shaw writes of "That indispensable revolt against poverty that must also be a revolt against riches?"

"Unto This Last," John Ruskin. "Major Barbara," Introduction.

CHAPTER VI

INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

1. The Impatience for Constructive Work

O where you will; discuss what vital subject

Go

you please, and inevitably a question is asked. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" or more concretely, "Well, what can I do about it?" The world is tired of destructive thought; it is demanding a reaffirmation of the fundamental truths of life.

Truly did Carlyle anticipate the spirit of the present day in his utterance, "What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and thyself away." The world is turning eagerly to him who has the hammer for building, asking where he keeps it, how he uses it, what it is made of, how it works, whether others could use one like it, and where duplicates are to be found. All of these queries must be answered, and, most important of all, they must be answered quickly, definitely and in certain terms.

Nor are people satisfied that the tool of construction should be a hammer. In an age of progress, why waste time over hammers? Why not have an 1 "Sartor Resartus," Ch. 9.