Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
of the United States of the full benefits of a beneficent invention,
tamper with correspondence and crush out newspapers which offend it.
It is necessary only to allude to these things, not to dwell on them.
Every one knows the tyranny and rapacity with which capital when
concentrated in large amounts is frequently wielded to corrupt, to
rob, and to destroy. What I wish to call the reader’s attention to is
that profits thus derived are not to be confounded with the legitimate
returns of capital as an agent of production. They are for the most
part to be attributed to a maladjustment of forces in the legislative
department of government, and to a blind adherence to ancient
barbarisms and the superstitious reverence for the technicalities of a
narrow profession in the administration of law; while the general cause
which in advancing communities tends, with the concentration of wealth,
to the concentration of power, is the solution of the great problem we
are seeking for, but have not yet found.
Any analysis will show that much of the profits which are, in common
thought, confounded with interest are in reality due, not to the
power of capital, but to the power of concentrated capital, or of
concentrated capital acting upon bad social adjustments. And it will
also show that what are clearly and properly wages of superintendence
are very frequently confounded with the earnings of capital.
And, so, profits properly due to the elements of risk are frequently
confounded with interest. Some people acquire wealth by taking chances
which to the majority of people must necessarily bring loss. Such are
many forms of speculation, and especially that mode of gambling known
as stock dealing. Nerve, judgment, the possession of capital, skill in
what in lower forms of gambling are known as the arts of the confidence
man and blackleg, give advantage to the individual; but, just as at a
gaming table, whatever one gains some one else must lose.
Now, taking the great fortunes that are so often referred to as
exemplifying the accumulative power of capital—the Dukes of Westminster
and Marquises of Bute, the Rothschilds, Astors, Stewarts, Vanderbilts,
Goulds, Stanfords, and Floods—it is upon examination readily seen that
they have been built up, in greater or less part, not by interest, but
by elements such as we have been reviewing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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