PRODUCTION AND DESIRE OF THE PRODUCT^ 



machinery, the pioneers of commerce ? Their chief Book iv 



moral indictment has been this : that these men, 



instead of labouring for their fellows, or for the for they them- 



. selves admit 



sake of any of those rewards which the socialists that it has not 

 declare to be so satisfying, have been motived ^ n(s not 

 solely by the passion of selfish " greed." Its hideous n 

 influence, they say, is as old as civilisation itself, and 

 the " monopolists of business ability " in Tyre and 

 Sidon were as much its creatures as are their 

 modern representatives in Chicago. And this asser- 

 tion, unlike many made by the socialists, has the 

 merit of being, so far as it goes, true. Greed, of 

 course, is a word which, in addition to its direct 

 meaning, carries with it an accretion of moral 

 insult ; but putting aside this, it means in the present 

 connection merely a desire on the part of the great 

 wealth-producer to enjoy an amount of wealth pro- 

 portionate to the amount produced by him : and 

 from the dawn of civilisation up to the present time 

 all great wealth-producers, whether merchants, manu- 

 facturers, or inventors, have had the desire of enjoy- 

 ing such wealth as their motive. The desire has 

 been connected with the activity just as universally 

 and closely as the desire of water is connected with 

 the act of drinking it, or the desire of winning a 

 woman with the act of making love to her. If the 

 socialists, then, would persuade us that a motive so 

 universal as this can be now superseded by others of 

 an entirely opposite character, they can do so only 

 by adducing the clearest evidence that, on the one 

 hand, this motive itself is losing its old power, and 



