“In dealing with Capital and Ability, I first treated them separately, I then showed that, regarded as a productive agent, Capital _is_ Ability, and must be treated as identical with it. But it is necessary, now we are dealing with distribution, to dissociate them for a moment and treat them separately once more. For even though it be admitted that Ability, working by means of Capital, produces, as it has been shown to do, nearly two-thirds of the national income,[63] and though it may be admitted further that a large portion of this product should go to the able men who are actively engaged in producing it—the men whose Ability animates and vivifies Capital—it may be argued that a portion of it, which is very large indeed, goes as a fact to men who do not exert themselves at all, or who, at any rate, do not exert themselves in the production of wealth. These men, it will be said, live not on the products of Ability, but on the interest of Capital, which they have come accidentally to possess; and it will be asked on what ground Labour is interested in forbearing to touch the possessions of those who produce nothing?... Why should it not appropriate what goes to this wholly non-productive class.” If Mr. Shaw or his readers are still in doubt as to the extent to which his criticism of myself is wide of the mark—if he still thinks that he is fighting any mistake but his own, when he attacks me as though I confused interest with the direct earnings of Ability, let me add one passage more out of the same chapter:— “Large profits must not be confounded with high interest. Large profits are a mixture of three things, as was pointed out by Mill, though he did not name two of them happily. He said that profits consisted of wages of superintendence, compensation for risk, and interest on Capital. If, instead of wages of superintendence we say the product of Ability, and instead of compensation for risk we say the reward of sagacity, which is itself a form of Ability, we shall have an accurate statement of the case.” Again, two pages earlier Mr. Shaw will find this:— “Interest is capable, under certain circumstances, of being reduced to a minimum without production being in any degree checked; and every pound which the man who employs Capital is thus relieved from paying to the man who owns it constitutes, _other things being equal_, a fund which may be appropriated by Labour.” These quotations will be enough to show how the bulk of Mr. Shaw’s criticisms, which he thinks are directed against myself, are criticisms of an absurd error and confusion of thought, which I have myself done my utmost to expose, in order that I might put the real facts of the case more clearly.