Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has absolutely nothing in countries where the tyranny of capitalism is untempered by any form of Socialism."[109] To those working men who might object that it is a gross exaggeration to say that the British worker is a slave, and that he is penniless, the Socialist agitator answers: "What? You are a free man and not a slave? There are no slaves in this country? What is a slave? One who works at the bidding of another, and only by permission of another, and for the profit of that other. Does not that fit your case exactly? Do you work when you like and idle when you like? Not you! You work when the capitalist requires your labour, when your services will be useful in making a profit for him. When that is not the case you can starve in the gutter, although there may be all the necessaries of life in profusion around you. These things do not belong to you, although you and your class have made them; they are so much wealth which your masters have acquired from your unpaid labour, things which you have produced, but for which you have never been paid, out of which you have been swindled by the natural operation of the system of wage-slavery of which you are the unconscious victim. From this condition of things there is no escape while the whole of the people do not own the means of production. Nothing but the abolition of the class ownership of the means of life, and the substitution of ownership of the whole people, will abolish this form of slavery."[110] The foregoing grievance is absurd. If regular work for a regular wage, agreed upon by contract, is slavery, then all salaried men from the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor downward are also "wage-slaves." The Socialist agitator, after having told the working men that they are no better off than negro slaves, then asks his hearers, as a rule: "Why is it that the producers in this country are the poorest of the population? Why is it that those who do not produce are the richest?"[111] The manner in which this question is put suggests the reply. Indeed, all Socialists agree in holding the rich responsible for the poverty of the poor, as the following utterances will show: "Socialism contends that the poverty of the poor is caused by robbery on the part of the rich. The mansion explains the hovel. Belgravia has its counterpart in Shoreditch. The factory, the foundry, the ship-building yard account for the shooting lodge, the yacht, and the tours in foreign lands. The long day's toil of one class renders possible the life-long play of the other."[112] "If you have no unemployed at the top of the social ladder you will have none at the bottom."[113]