Science and Industry 



industry is, that it is a vast scheme of co-operation 

 worked for the mutual benefit of all its members, 

 which benefit is secured by specialisation of eco- 

 nomic function and by exchange, competition in 

 all its branches being merely one mode of co- 

 operation. That this scheme works very waste- 

 fully is generally admitted, and this waste driven 

 home implies that the wills of individual workers 

 and of business groups in this great co-operative 

 whole are weakened or prevented, so that the 

 productive energy they inspire is deficient or mis- 

 spent. This defect is of a twofold nature. In 

 the first place, the stimulus of individual self- 

 interest upon which the present business system 

 formally relies, is wastefully applied through the 

 existing distribution of wealth. Large portions 

 of income which are paid in rents, high profits, 

 fees, &c., though necessary payments in the sense 

 that they can be extorted by advantageous bar- 

 gaining under existing terms of ownership, afford 

 no genuine incentive to the owner of any sort 

 of productive energy to apply that energy, and, 

 in not a few instances, serve to divert the use of 

 land or capital from socially useful to socially 

 useless, or even injurious applications. 



Unearned or excessive elements of income not 

 merely serve to evoke no productive energy, they 

 serve to sterilise potential energy. This waste of 

 excessive payments has for its natural counter- 

 part a corresponding waste of defective payments. 

 Under the systems of wage-labour which com- 

 monly prevail an inadequate stimulus is applied 



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