The three ideas or conceptions, then, which have engaged our attention in this and the three preceding chapters--namely, the idea that labour does, as a statistical fact, produce far more in values than it at present gets back in wages; the idea that the mass of the population could permanently augment its resources by confiscating all dividends as fast as they became due, and the idea that it is possible to provide for unequal men, for more than a moment of their lives, equal opportunities of experimenting with their real or imaginary powers, are ideas, indeed, which have all the vices characteristic of socialistic thought; but the first and the third have no necessary connection with socialism, and the second is not peculiar to it. We will now return to it as a system of exclusive and distinctive doctrines, and sum up, in general terms, the conclusions to which our examination of it is calculated to lead far-seeing and practical men, and more especially active politicians. FOOTNOTES: [25] The Christian Socialist author of _The Gospel for To-day_. See chapter on Christian Socialism. [26] Mr. Wilshire, in his volume of criticism on my American speeches. [27] _Socialism: the Mallock-Wilshire Argument._ By Gaylord Wilshire. New York, 1907. [28] While this work was in the press, one of the English Labour members, Mr. Curran, at a public meeting, gave his views, as a socialist, about this very question--equality of industrial opportunity--and as an example of such opportunity already in existence, he mentioned the cash-credit system, which prevails in banks in Scotland. He seemed unaware that such advances of capital made in this system are made to picked men only. These men, moreover, have the strongest stimulus to effect in the face that they will keep all their profits. If a socialistic state gave cash-credits to everybody, it would confiscate all the profits if the workers were successful, and have no remedy against them if they failed. [29] _Unto This Last._ [30] See note to previous chapter, referring to the recent _Red Catechism_ for socialist Sunday schools, in which children are taught, as the primary article of faith, that the wage-earners produce everything, that the productivity of all is practically equal, and that all are entitled to expect precisely the same kind of life. CHAPTER XVI THE SOCIAL POLICY OF THE FUTURE I was constantly asked by socialists in America whether I really believed that society, as it is, is perfect, and that there are no evils and defects in it which are crying aloud for remedy. Unless I believed this--and that I could do so was hardly credible--I ought, they said, if I endeavoured to discredit the remedy proposed by themselves, to suggest another, which would be better and equally general, of my own.