And now we are discussing the Socialist attitude towards property, it may be well to consider a little group of objections that are often made in anti-Socialist tracts. I refer more particularly to a certain hard case, the hard case of the Savings of the Virtuous Small Man. The reader, if he is at all familiar with this branch of controversial literature, probably knows how that distressing case is put. One is presented with a poor man of inconceivable industry, goodness and virtue; he has worked, he has saved; at last, for the security of his old age, he holds a few shares in a business, a "bit of land" or--perhaps through a building society--house property. Would we--the Anti-Socialist chokes with emotion--so alter the world as to rob him of _that_? ... The Anti-Socialist gathers himself together with an effort and goes on to a still more touching thought ... the widow![13] [13] "The ethical case for slavery in the Southern States of America," my friend Mr. Graham Wallas reminds me, "was largely argued on the instance of the widow 'with a few strong slaves.'" Well, I think there are assurances in the previous section to disabuse the reader's mind a little in this matter. This solicitude for the Saving Small Man and for the widow and orphan seems to me one of the least honest of all the anti-Socialist arguments. The man "who has saved a few pounds," the poor widow woman and her children clinging to some scrap of freehold are thrust forward to defend the harvest of the landlord and the financier. Let us look at the facts of the case and see how this present economic system of ours really does treat the "stocking" of the poor.