C. E. DUTTON'— ECONOMICS OF CONCENTRATED CAPITAL. 
15 
and on the whole the results are for good, hut unhappily it has been 
attended with some serious evils. Here we reach a point where we must 
take a broader view of our subject, and where moral and ethical consid- 
erations must he taken account of in their economic bearings. 
There are many who seem to see in this great concentration of capital 
an alarming menace to the well-being of communities, and even to civili- 
zation itself. They see in them a vast widening of the gulf between 
poverty and riches. 
Wealth brings power to command services, and they see power over 
the lives and. destinies of others growing into despotism on the part of a 
few, and servility and serfdom on the part of the many. And in general 
they see an evolution tending ever toward the had and away from the 
good. 
The economist, on the other hand, takes a different view of it. He 
is by no means an optimist, indeed, and still less is he a pessimist. He 
sees no menace to the welfare of the community in the mere fact of vast 
individual ownerships, unless, perhaps, in the sense in which the fox 
saw in the increasing size and fatness of the fowls, a growing menace to 
the future welfare of the population of the hen-coop. These great pos- 
sessions exist almost wholly in the form and relations of capital, and 
the function of capital is to increase and multiply the production of 
goods, and their distribution to the community. It has no other func- 
tion. He who owns it must employ it in furnishing the goods and ser- 
vices which the community demands, or it will dissolve away from him. 
Whatever it is instrumental in producing goes to the community, except 
the small percentage which the owner receives in the shape of profit. 
Thus the usufruct of capital accrues to the public, and it extends the 
profit many times over. 
In the warm agitation of this and similar subjects now going on, the 
socialist bends his thoughts almost wholly upon the ownership of wealth 
in the form of capital, and upon the profits the ownership brings to the 
owner. This is the measure of inequality of wealth which he holds up 
as the crowning social evil. Of the usufruct and its distribution to all, 
he seems strangely unconscious. The economist, on the contrary, is 
primarily concerned with the usufruct. But he is far from being 
unconscious of the nature and importance of ownership and its profits, 
or of their consequences for good or evil. In his sight, the usufruct 
and its distribution are the main considerations, and his anxiety about 
the ownership is limited to the desire to see it so placed as to lead to 
the greatest and most beneficial product, and to the most just and widest 
distribution of it. So long as this condition is fulfilled he cares little 
who owns the capital, or how much he owns. 
