THE FORCES BEHIND CAPITAL 371 



partly because the employed, whatever advantages Book iv 

 they may gain, will be no nearer to content than 

 they were before, partly because the employers 

 are constantly forced into a position of unwilling 

 antagonism to men whom they would wish to 

 befriend. 



The object of this present work, so far as the The object of 

 question of wealth and its distribution is concerned, W0 rk is to 



has been to show how absolutely false to fact are the &&? of the 

 theories to which this impracticable discontent is due, 



and how intellectually ludicrous is the position of the socialist >c 



J content and 



school of thinkers who imagine that such theories socialistic 



,-P,, 1-1 i aspirations ; 



represent accurate science. 1 nese thinkers, in their 

 dealings with property and capital, in spite of the 

 esoteric admissions of a certain number of them to 

 the contrary, touch the truth in their more popular 

 utterances, only by the process of inverting it, or of 

 putting the cart before the horse. They represent 

 the employing classes as possessing exceptional 

 strength merely because they are accidentally the 

 possessors of capital. The actual truth is that these 

 classes are possessors of capital because they them- 

 selves or their fathers have possessed exceptional 

 strength. The arrows of Ulysses were more for- 

 midable than those of the suitors because Ulysses 

 shot with a stronger bow than they ; but he shot 

 with a stronger bow for the very simple reason 

 that he was strong enough to bend it and they 

 were not. The employing classes contribute to the 

 processes of production not less than the employed ; 

 in certain senses they contribute incalculably more, 



