If the State should acquire the railways, they would certainly be run at a profit. The sooner the Socialists abandon their fixed idea that profit on private and national undertakings is immoral, the better will it be for them. So long as they decry profit and propose to work State undertakings without a profit, so long can they not be taken seriously. Profit consists in part of the salary of direction, in part of the earnings set aside for effecting the necessary alterations, improvements, and extensions, and for forming a reserve fund for making losses good, &c. Therefore abandonment of profit would mean the decline and decay of the national capital. FOOTNOTES: [729] Davidson, _Free Trade_ v. _Fettered Transport_, p. 9. [730] _Ibid._ p. 7. [731] _Reformers' Year Book_, 1907, pp. 119, 120. [732] Hyndman, _Real Reform_, p. 14. [733] _Fabianism and the Fiscal Question_, p. 17. [734] Macdonald, _Labour and the Empire_, p. 96. [735] _Reformers' Year Book_, 1907, p. 120. [736] _Independent Labour Party Report, Annual Conference_, 1907, p. 50. [737] _Socialism and Labour Policy_, p. 14. [738] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, p. 86. [739] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 13. [740] Davidson, _Free Trade and Fettered Transport_, p. 17. [741] Davidson, _Free Rails and Trams_, p. 9. [742] _Ibid._ p. 13. [743] Davidson, _Free Rails and Free Trams_, p. 7. [744] _Ibid._ p. 14. [745] _Public Control of Electric Power and Transit_, p. 10. [746] Davidson, _Free Rails and Trams_, p. 5. [747] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 158. [748] _Public Control of Electric Power and Transit_, p. 14. [749] _Fabianism and the Fiscal Question_, p. 16. [750] _Fabianism and the Fiscal Question_, p. 16. CHAPTER XX SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS ON MONEY, BANKS, AND BANKING All Socialists wish to abolish private capital. Money embodies private capital in its most portable form. It can easily be hidden, and as the Socialists wish to prevent the re-accumulation of new private capital, the abolition of money, and especially of gold and silver, has prominently figured in all Socialistic programmes since the time of Protagoras and of Plato. Socialists wish to effect the exchange of commodities, the payment of labour, and the settlement of accounts mainly by book-keeping.