◆¹ So far, then, as modern production is concerned, all the results of past Ability, instead of becoming the common property of Labour, become on the whole, with allowance for many exceptions, more and more strictly the monopoly of living Ability; because these results becoming more and more complicated, Ability becomes more and more essential to the power of mastering and of using them. As, however, I shall point out by and by, in more than one connection, the Ability that masters and uses them differs much in kind from the Ability that originally produced them: one difference being that, whereas to invent and perfect some new machine requires Ability of the highest class in, let us say, one man, and Ability of the second class in a few other men, his partners; to use this machine to the best advantage, and control and maintain the industry which its use has inaugurated or developed, may require perhaps Ability of only the second class in one man, but will require Ability of the third and fourth class in a large number of men. [Sidenote ◆1 And the monopoly of Ability grows stricter at each fresh stage of progress.] ◆¹ Ability therefore—the Ability of living men—constantly tends, as the income of the nation grows, to play a larger part in its production, or to produce a larger part of it; whilst Labour, though without it no income could be produced at all, tends to produce a part which is both relatively and absolutely smaller. We assume, for instance, that the Labour of this country a hundred years ago was capable of producing the whole of what was the national income then. If it could by itself, without any Ability to guide it, have succeeded then, when production was so much simpler, in just producing the yearly amount in question,—which, as a matter of fact, it could not have done even then,—the same amount of Labour, without any Ability to guide it, could certainly not succeed in producing so much now, when all the conditions of production have become so much more complicated, and when elaborate organisation is necessary to make almost any effort effective. [Sidenote ◆1 Thus the argument above quoted against the claims of Ability, when examined, only throws additional light on their strength.] ◆¹ Thus the argument, which was fermenting in my American correspondent’s mind, and which he regarded as reducing the claims of Ability to “hog-wash,” really affords the means, if examined carefully and minutely, of establishing yet more firmly the position it was invoked to shatter, and of making the claims of Ability not only clearer but more extensive. CHAPTER III _That Ability is a natural Monopoly, due to the congenital Peculiarities of a Minority. The Fallacies of other Views exposed._