286 The Ideal State 



who make the necessaries of life the means of subsistence. 

 Or it might have been devoted to the acquisition of 

 works of Art, which is ever deserving of encourage- 

 ment, and is the means by which the happiness of the 

 people can be increased and their culture promoted. 



All luxurious use of wealth is injurious to the State 

 in so far as it interferes with industry, as it must be 

 evident that all money so misspent might have been 

 used to develop or foster trade and so increase the food 

 supply or augment the purchasing power of the labour- 

 ing classes. If a farmer, for instance, spends his in- 

 come on alcohol, or racing, or buying unnecessary 

 horses, which ought to have been devoted to manuring 

 and working his land and thereby securing larger 

 crops, he is not only injuring himself by misspending 

 it and in diminishing his own income from the land, but 

 he is reducing the food supplies which it ought to be 

 his aim to augment to the fullest possible extent. 



We thus see how it is the duty of every man under 

 present conditions to consider his wealth as a trust to 

 be devoted to his own highest good and that of the 

 greatest benefit to the society in which he lives, as by 

 misspending he is interfering with the purchasing power 

 and even the food of the workers of the land, who in 

 the first place produce wealth by labouring the soil, 

 which is the primary source of all wealth. 



Some unthinking people among reformers at the 

 present time — we think it is a cry of the more advanced 

 of the Syndicalist party in England — are demanding the 

 control of the industries by the workmen, who would 

 work them for their own private gain without regard 

 to parliamentary control. Parliament is too slow for 

 them, and they mean to anticipate governmental 

 action and act independently of its controlling power. 

 Such a state of matters is unthinkable ; it means chaos, 

 and can only end in disaster to themselves. It is quite 



