440 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



the world, inhabiting a rich and fertile country, from 

 grinding poverty or absolute starvation ? Is it impossible 

 so to arrange matters that a sufficient portion of the 

 wealth they create may be retained by the workers, even 

 if the idle rich have a little less of profuse " and wasteful 

 luxury ? 



The Impotence of our Legislators. 



Our legislators, our economists, our religious teachers, 

 almost with one voice tell the people that any better 

 organization of society than that which we now possess is 

 impossible. That \ve must go on as we have been going on, 

 patching here, altering there, now mitigating the severity 

 of a distressing symptom, now slightly clipping the wings of 

 the landlord, the capitalist, or the sweater ; but never 

 going down to the root of the evil ; never interfering with 

 vested interests in ancestral wrong ; never daring to do 

 anything which shall diminish rent and interest and profit, 

 and to the same extent increase the reward of labour ; 

 never seek out the fundamental injustice which deprives 

 men of their birthright in their native land, and enables 

 a small number of landlords to tax the rest of the 

 community to the amount of hundreds of millions for 

 permission to cultivate and live upon the soil in the 

 country of their birth. Can we, then, wonder that both 

 workers and thinkers are getting tired of all this hopeless 

 incapacity in their rulers? That, possessing education 

 which has made them acquainted with the works of great 

 writers on these matters, from Sir Thomas More to 

 Robert Owen, from Henry George to Edward Bellamy, 

 from Karl Marx to Carlyle and Ruskin ; and possessing as 

 they do ability, and honesty, and determination, fully 

 equal to that of the coterie of landlords and capitalists 

 which has hitherto governed them, they are determined, 

 as soon as may be, to govern themselves. 



The Work of the Twentieth Century. 



Now, I believe that the great work of this century, 

 that which is the true preparation for the work to be done 

 in the coming twentieth century, is not its well-meant 



