138 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



of the rich and retainers of all sorts. Then, of course, there are the 

 young people who are still being educated and the pensioners. The cost of 

 supporting all the extra people must be added to the legitimate cost of 

 manufacture and distribution. 



Imagine a state in which the majority of the inhabitants are at work 

 using the most efficient machinery. They can supply their material 

 wants and the standard of life may be very high. If, on the contrary, only 

 15 per cent, of them are doing useful work, then the standard of life is 

 necessarily lower. The mere fact that some of the inhabitants are very 

 wealthy, and have a large amount of money to invest, does not help very 

 much the man who is out of work and has no facilities for making the 

 things he wants. It is not a solution to set him to make roads which he 

 does not want. Nor is it a solution to make him into a gardener, a butler 

 or a footman. The rich man may flatter himself that he is giving work 

 to one hundred people. He is possibly doing his best according to his 

 lights, but he may be a part of a system which is withdrawing one 

 hundred workers from the really useful tasks and thereby impoverishing 

 the state. I say ' may be ' because some servants of the well-to-do are 

 very useful members of society. The chauffeur who enables a master of 

 industry to get about quickly may be doing more useful work than if he 

 were employed in the factory. But the greater part of the money spent 

 by the well-to-do goes into channels that do not contribute to the welfare 

 of the state as a whole. 



For all the inhabitants of a state to be as wealthy as possible two condi- 

 tions are necessary : 



(i) Things that contribute to well-being shall be manufactured at the 

 greatest speed possible at our present state of knowledge, and with the 

 best appliances available. 



(2) The method of distribution shall be so efficient that the people who 

 make the things are able to buy the things that are made. Anything that 

 interferes with the second condition will prevent the obtaining of the 

 first. 



Consider the hundred million inhabitants of the United States of 

 America. They have at hand all raw materials, all food supplies, capital 

 equipment in the way of factories, expert advisers and means of transport. 

 What is to prevent every inhabitant from enjoying a very high standard 

 of life } What is it that condemns the great majority of them to a very 

 poor standard ? It is the system of trading, in which most men are 

 traders and only a few are real workers. And why are there so many 

 traders ? Because under the present rules it is more profitable to trade 

 than to work. Alter the rules so that only the useful workers, useful 

 distributors and providers of useful capital share the things that are 

 made, and there will be hardly any limit to the material wealth of the 

 individual. 



In the past the engineers have been busy with their own jobs. They 

 leave the making of the laws, the controlling of the state and the general 

 management of things to the politician and the tub-thumper. This is 

 especially so in the U.S.A., but most countries suffer from the absence 

 of special intelligence and expert knowledge in the make-up of their 



