12 



EOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



amount of satisfactions consumed or enjoyed — the new 

 conditions (equality of earnings) would be ' a blight and a 

 curse; for while the existing defects in distribution maybe 

 the cause of the misery and destruction of thousands of 

 valuable lives, the equality scheme would certainly entail the 

 misery and destruction of millions now living in a state of 

 comparative comfort. 



Many who fail to ponder upon these root difficulties may 

 exclaim : — How can you explain this paradox ? Why should, 

 the fairer distribution of wealth (that according to actual, 

 individual needs, without regard to inequalities of natural 

 powers, capacities or inheritance,) — raising the average 

 comfort of the majority, and lowering the superfluous and 

 luxurious satisfactions of the minority — be productive of such 

 disaster? The answer is plain enough. The power to 

 effect large savings or to create the more costly auxiliaries of 

 labour depends mainly upon the existence of specially 

 favourable conditions. 



1. The desire to accumulate or save can only become 

 strong enough to be effective when the stronger desires for 

 primary satisfactions are appeased. 



2. Savings or accumulations, therefore, can never be pro- 

 duced by labourers or others whose earnings do not exceed 

 the supply necessary to satisfy the three primary wants. The 

 majority of breadwinners are always in this hand to mouth 

 condition, and rarely of themselves are able to contribute to 

 the maintenance and increase of machines and instruments to 

 serve as auxiliaries of production to future labour. Thev, 

 however, in their social relations more than contribute the 

 average share of the future surplus workers whose efforts 

 must be proportionately supplemented by capital and power- 

 multiplying instruments, if they are to enjoy the same or a 

 further improved condition. 



Those workers whose earnings are sufficient to provide 

 comforts beyond the limits of bare prime necessaries, may, 

 however, by self-denial in the satisfactions of comforts, lay by 

 a small store of savings, which in time may swell into such 

 valuable auxiliaries to earnings, that the self-denial in 

 comforts hitherto may be rewarded in the greater satisfaction 

 of comforts in the future, and even add considerably to 

 the store of wealth which may be converted into the more 

 permanent capitalised auxiliary instruments of power which 

 will benefit the generations coming after them. 



Those, however, who contribute most largely to the creation 

 of the permanent instruments which add unknown power to 

 the efforts of hand labour, are chiefly those who either have- 

 inherited these or similar creations from their ancestors, or 

 who by extraordinary energy, skill or self-denial, or all 



