[Sidenote ◆1 We will begin with the spontaneous tendencies—_i.e._ the natural actions of individuals, each pursuing his own interest.] [Sidenote ◆2 There are two ways of getting rich: (1) by abstracting from an existing income, or (2) by adding to it. The rich class of the modern world have, as a whole, become rich in the second way.] ◆¹ The natural causes that tend to distribute amongst Labour a large portion of the wealth produced by Ability will be best understood if we first consider for a moment the two ways—and the two only ways—in which a minority can become wealthy. ◆² What these are can be easily realised thus. Let us imagine a community of eight labouring men, who make each of them _fifty pounds_ a year, and who represent Labour; and let us imagine a ninth man,—a man of Ability,—who represents the minority. The ninth man might, if he were strong enough, rob each of the eight men of _twenty-five pounds_, compelling them each to live on _twenty-five pounds_ instead of on _fifty pounds_, and appropriate to himself an annual _two hundred pounds_. Or he might reach the same result in a totally different way. He might so direct and assist the Labour of the eight men, that without any extra effort to themselves they each, instead of _fifty pounds_ produced _seventy-five pounds_, and if, under these circumstances, he took _twenty-five pounds_ from each, he would gain the same sum as before, namely _two hundred pounds_, but, as I said, in a totally different way. It would represent what he had added to the original product of the labourers, instead of representing anything he had taken from it. Now whatever may have been true of rich classes in former times and under other social conditions, the riches now enjoyed by the rich class in this country have, with exceptions which are utterly unimportant, been acquired by the latter of these two methods, not by the former. They represent an addition to the product of Labour, not an abstraction from it. This is, of course, clear from what has been said already; but it is necessary here to specially bear it in mind. [Sidenote ◆1 Let us consider the nature of the process,] [Sidenote ◆2 By first representing Labour and Ability in their simplest imaginable forms; Ability, or the employing class, being represented as one man.]