THE RICH RICHER, THE POOR POORER. 295 



class of persons — that is, all the great middle class — and the greater 

 the barrier it sets up against any efforts of persons of that class to 

 begin accumulation. If the taxes have for their object to take from 

 some and give to others, as is the case with all protective taxes, we 

 have only a more intense and obvious action in the same direction, 

 and one whose effects must be far greater and sooner realized. The 

 effect of protective taxes in this country to drive out the small men, 

 and to throw special lines of industry into the hands of a few large 

 capitalists, has been noted often. It is only a case of the law which I 

 am defining. 



My generalization might even be made broader. It is the tendency 

 of all the hardships of life to destroy the middle class. Capital, as it 

 grows larger, takes on new increments with greater and greater ease. 

 It acquires a kind of momentum. The rich man, therefore, can endure 

 the shocks of material calamity and misfortune with less distress the 

 richer he is. A bad season may throw a small farmer into debt from 

 which he can never recover. It may not do more to a large farmer 

 than lessen one year's income. A few years of hard times may drive 

 into bankruptcy a great number of men of small capital, while a man 

 of large capital may tide over the distress and put himself in a position 

 to make great gains when prosperity comes again. 



The hardships and calamities which are strictly social are such as 

 come from disorder, violence, insecurity, covetousness, envy, etc. The 

 state has for its function to repress all these. It appears from what 

 I have said that it is hard to maintain a middle class on a high stage 

 of civilization. If the state does not do its work properly, such classes, 

 representing the wide distribution of comfort and well-being, will die 

 out. If the state itself gives license to robbery and spoliation, or en- 

 forces almsgiving, it is working to destroy the whole middle class, 

 and to divide society into two great classes, the rich who are growing 

 richer, not by industry, but by spoliation, and the poor who are grow- 

 ing poorer, not by industrial weakness, but by oppression. 



Now, a state which is in any degree socialistic is in that degree on 

 the line of policy whose disastrous effects have here been described. 

 The state, it can not too often be repeated, has nothing, and can give 

 nothing, which it does not take from somebody. Its victims must be 

 those who have earned and saved, and they must be the broad, strong 

 middle classes, from whom alone any important contributions can be 

 drawn. They must be impoverished. Its pets, whoever they may be, 

 must be pauperized and proletarianized. Its agents alone — that is, those 

 who, in the name of the state, perform the operation of taking from 

 some to give to others — can become rich, and if ever such a state 

 should be organized, they may realize wealth beyond the dreams of a 

 proconsul. 



To people untrained in the study of social forces it may appear the 

 most obvious thing in the world that, if we should confiscate the prop- 



