THE MISCHIEF OF FALSE THEORIES 369 



The crude and childish philosophy which socialists Bookiv 

 and so-called labour -leaders endeavour to diffuse 

 amongst the great masses of the population rests, 

 so far as the masses of the population understand it, 

 on the theory that society is composed of "approxi- 

 mately equal units," and that whatever is produced 

 within a community is produced by that community 

 as a whole. Hence the members argue, and the 

 socialists distinctly tell them, that property and 

 capital are merely accidental possessions, which give 

 to those who possess them a purely adventitious 

 power. These teachers add that such possessions, in 

 abstract justice, should be taken from their present 

 possessors and divided amongst the community at which interferes 

 large ; and from this it follows that all claims to the harmonious 



profits of capital, as put forward by its present 

 possessors, are, in an abstract sense, unjust. The ^^ 

 consequence is that the employed, when stimulated 

 into conflict with the employers, enter on the conflict 

 in a temper which forbids them to be satisfied with 

 any immediate result of it, however favourable to 

 themselves. Whatever advance in wages, or reduc- 

 tion in hours, the employers may have conceded, 

 the employed so far as they are influenced by the 

 socialistic fallacies of the day consider themselves 

 still wronged almost as much as ever, so long as 

 the employers continue to exist at all ; and thus 

 any cordial understanding between the two classes 

 is made impossible. When the employed strike 

 or agitate for higher wages, they may be compared 

 to a man who maintains that his tailor's bill is 



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