75 ONE MAWS GAIN ANOTHER MAN S LOSS? 151 



duce, which each has to sell one line representing the unit of 

 produce per annum. Similarly let a line arriving at his left 

 hand represent the goods which each man consumes, one line 

 representing one unit of consumption per annum. Now if any 

 two join hands by means of aline, this line forms a closed circuit 

 showing that produce of equal value has been interchanged. 

 All the lines that go out from a man's right hand must be 

 followed home to his left without using the same line twice. 

 This indicates that all the produce has been sold. On a system 

 of pure barter he never could get rid of any produce until one 

 of these imaginary circuits was closed. But the circuit might 

 be a very long one. By the introduction of the system of credit 

 under which the coin of the realm was all in the national bank, 

 a man might sell his produce and get nothing for it. One of 

 the lines would not come home, he would never be paid his due. 

 But excluding this in our ideal community we see that riches 

 and poverty may exist where there are no capitalists no bad 

 people no money. Further, that it does not arise by any pro- 

 - analogous to robbery or even profit. If a man can make 

 nothing wanted by other persons able to give him back an 

 equivalent, he is thereby reduced to his own resources. He 

 most in that case make his own food, clothes and shelter. That 

 will always mean that he is poor. We may further see that 

 the way to make him rich is not to teach him to produce that 

 which is already produced in quantity sufficient for the com- 

 munity, but to teach him how he may produce that which 

 will be consumed by those who already produce what he 

 wants in greater quantities than they require for their own 

 use. If the weavers, fishers, farmers and carpenters had only 

 just been able to make what they required, the hunters' luckv 

 cap would never have started a new industry. Now the 

 actual condition of the world with capital and wages is not so 

 very different from that of our ideal island. The poor people 

 are those who make the wrong things, and the right things 

 it will pay them to make are the things which the rich 

 want. We have shown that poverty and riches may co-exist 

 where the conditions of existence are very primitive and where 

 no man makes a profit either in money or in kind : that even 

 under these primitive conditions an increase of production by 



