The foregoing extracts make it clear that, in the eyes of Socialists, practically all citizens, manual labourers excepted, are "drones and parasites." Directors, managers, doctors, chemists, ships' captains, teachers, &c., and even workmen of exceptional ability also, rob the general body of workers of half their wages and subsist only owing to the monopoly of property-holders who control the distribution of wealth. Upon these curious premisses are based the conclusions: "The profits and salaries of the class who share in the advantages of the monopoly of the instruments of production, or are endowed by Nature with any exceptional ability of high marketable value, amount according to the best estimate that can be formed, to about _460,000,000l._ annually, while out of a national income of some _1,800,000,000l._ a year the workers in the manual labour class--four-fifths of the whole population--obtain in wages not more than _690,000,000l._ It may be safely said that the workers from top to bottom of society pay a fine of one-half the wealth they produce to a parasitic class before providing for the maintenance of themselves and their proper dependents."[230] "It is this robbery and waste on the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor."[231] "So long as the instruments of production are in unrestrained private ownership, so long must the tribute of the workers to the drones continue, so long will the toiler's reward inevitably be reduced by their exactions."[232] "Socialism regards the capitalist proper not as a useful captain of industry, but as a mere share-holding, dividend-drawing parasite upon labour, and the Socialist party presses forward to his elimination from the field of production."[233] "The workers who have produced all this wealth only get a part--the smallest part at that--of the wealth they produce. Now we Socialists say that this wealth produced by the labour of the workers should belong to them, and not to the capitalists who produce nothing. Seeing that the interest of the worker is to get as much of this wealth, and on the other hand the capitalist wants as much of this wealth, as he can get, therefore we say that the interests of the workers and of the capitalists are not identical, but opposite."[234] "The interest of the working class can only be served even in the smallest degree by the curtailment of the power of the master class; that every material advance is useless except in so far as it helps to effect other achievements, and that the realisation of Labour politics, the well-being of the working class, can only be accomplished by its complete emancipation from capitalism."[235] In other words, the Socialist writers quoted agree in this: that the lot of the wage-earners can be improved only by taking the wealth from the rich. In order to introduce Socialism the present social order must be overturned. With this object in view they have addressed declarations of war to the owners of property.