DISTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL INCOME 313 



more than it needed anything else. They who once understand 

 this situation will cease to inveigh against capitalists as such, 

 but will begin to become capitalists as rapidly as they can. They 

 will then have the double satisfaction of knowing that they 

 are not only benefiting themselves, but are benefiting society 

 as well. They will be supplying what society needs more and 

 more in proportion as inventions increase, and because they 

 supply what society needs they will be rewarded by society. 



There is need, however, of the most careful discrimination 

 between genuine productive capital and spurious or acquisitive 

 capital. Genuine capital consists of productive tools, imple- 

 ments, and improvements of all kinds which add to the pro- 

 ductive power of the world. There is a kind of possession 

 masquerading under the name of capital which is directed 

 toward the impoverishment rather than the enrichment of the 

 world. Devices for the beguiling of innocent people into the 

 purchase of shares in fraudulent mining and other corporations ; 

 lottery companies which sell for a dollar, tickets whose math- 

 ematical value, based on the theory of chances, is less than 

 twenty cents ; gambling establishments of various kinds ; trusts 

 and other monopolistic organizations whose single purpose is 

 to cause two dollars to emerge from other people's pockets 

 whence one had emerged before ; patent-medicine establish- 

 ments ; devices for the adulteration of goods ; counterfeiters' 

 outfits; "gold bricks" of various kinds, and a multitude of 

 other similar forms of "business" enterprise using "business 

 capital " belong under this general heading. Rural people of 

 the more ignorant sort seem to be the peculiar prey of these 

 forms of predatory enterprise, all of whose homes are in the 

 city. If these forms of deception resulted in the speedy star- 

 vation and death of those who are deceived, there would be at 

 least the result of ridding the country of fools as a partial com- 

 pensation for the filling of the city with knaves ; but since they 



