of occasional rushes of activity and prolonged intervals of leisure. He most probably finds he can spare a certain amount of money for speculation, with a view to adding more to the sum total of his income. He looks forward to handing down to his children sufficient means to make each of them independent, and meanwhile has his boys educated in the large public schools, where they can associate with boys who are similarly situated. What possible harm can there be in all this? So far from being parasitic, he counts himself as a beneficent agent in the general industrial activity, at the same time appearing as a credit to his society and a notably refined product of the class of which he is a member. Above all, he is popular, and gains ostensibly the respect and regard of his friends, his neighbours, and his dependents. A favourable case has purposely been made for him, because if we accuse him of self-indulgence and greed, and describe him as a gambler, spending his substance on objects which are generally admitted to be pernicious and unworthy, the case could not be defended at all. The fundamental theory which makes this man’s position untenable has already been explained--namely, that after he has satisfied his legitimate requirements all the surplus money he keeps is being held back from serving urgent needs; and, moreover, the method in which he spends the surplus is directly or indirectly harmful to himself and others. We call the money his as if by some miracle he had made it. Often enough he has not helped even by the smallest exertion to create it. The wealth has been and is being daily and hourly produced by the exertion of numberless people who are either employed by him or employed in furthering enterprises in which he has invested his money. It will be said that his share as the wise dispenser of capital, without which labour and enterprise could not be set in motion, is an all-important part of the general process of business. But he invests not to promote enterprise, but to get high dividends; and an elaborate system has been set up in order to tempt him to put his money into concerns that are by no means always sound or of the smallest public utility. Capital would exist and flow far more freely without the large capitalist. He acts as a dam to the stream; a certain amount escapes back into the main channel, but much more is checked and diverted into stagnant and putrefying pools of his own creation. The free flow of blood is life-giving; the clotting or coagulation of blood produces disease.