174 KOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



ments, and thus to give a higher content to our present epoch 

 than that of classical antiquity." As it is, he charges not 

 inaccurately the few colossal capitalists and industrial chiefs 

 of the present age with miserly abstemiousness as regards the 

 proportion of the wealth gained by them which they devote 

 to immediate personal enjoyment and consumption. He 

 adds : — " It is true that forces on forces are created, new 

 machinery continually devised, new means of communication;, 

 it is true that the capitalists, who have the means at their 

 command, are ceaselessly active in creating, instead of 

 enjoying, the fruits of their toil in dignified leisure ; but, 

 nevertheless, the constantly increasing activity aims directly 

 at anything rather than the furtherance of the common 

 weal (?) . . . The great interest of these times, however, 

 is no longer, as in antiquity, immediate enjoyment, but the 

 accumulation of capital." 



Again he states (p. 241) : — " We live, in fact, not for 

 enjoyment, but for labour and for wants ; but amongst those 

 wants that of pleonexia is so over-bearing that all true and 

 lasting progress, all progress that might benefit the mass of 

 the people, is lost, or, as it were, gained only incidentally." 



If this be a true picture, and it must be confessed it is to 

 some extent borne out by experience, we may ask, Who 

 derives the benefit of the capitalised wealth ? This requires 

 careful analysis ; for the conclusion to be drawn as regards 

 the public weal may be widely different from that indicated by 

 Lange. 



We may truly premise, in the first place, that capital in the 

 hands of the rich, in so far as personal consumption is con- 

 cerned, is as much a tool of trade as is the plough to the 

 farmer. By its means he sets in motion the wheels of many 

 industries, and so enables the smaller capitalist of muscular 

 services to exchange his capital for primary wants, necessary 

 minor tools of trade, and such comforts as his varying rates 

 of profit may afford. The rich capitalist in like manner, but 

 with much larger profit, reaps the reward of his ventures. 

 But there is this important difference : The rich capitalist 

 cannot or does not abstract from his profits the same propor- 

 tion of earnings towards his personal wants and enjoyments 

 as the workman does. On the contrary, what he can 

 directly consume personally of the said primary wants and 

 comforts is limited by the same natural law as his humblest 

 workman, and the necessities of tear and wear in his machine 

 {capital), or the passion or necessity to increase the number 

 and power of his machines, and to keep them ever at work, 

 abstract the greater portion of Ms increasing or decreasing 

 profits. In consequence of this inevitable tendency it is 

 really a difficult question to say which of the two — rich 

 capitalist or workman — personally consumes the largest 



