In the meanwhile we cannot accept our rich man’s plea that as a landlord, even as a good landlord, his expenditure is profitable. It is not that he makes nothing but mistakes; it is that he cannot give sufficient time and attention to it; it is that he is by nature incapable--an incapacity which he shares with every other mortal--of deriving from his estate of some thousands of acres all that it could produce. It follows that his action in keeping to himself large tracts of this unique form of property is depriving many of a means of employment and countless hundreds of the enjoyment of the fruits of the land; it is driving the population from the country districts to overcrowd the towns, add to the number of the unemployed, and swell the volume of crime. The land question with all its ramifications is perhaps the most complex and vast of the many subjects that are touched by the responsibility of riches, but it is one that more completely than any other illustrates the argument, and is the best evidence of the limitation of the rich man’s powers. In no field of human activity ought it to be tolerated that an entirely unfitted and untrained man should be put at the head of so difficult and highly technical a business as the management of land. When this occurs in commerce the business collapses, but in land management the owner remains doing untold damage and often playing the ridiculous part of a territorial magnate or a petty monarch, to his own hurt and to the hindrance of his subjects. An American writer making a survey of life in England to-day says, “When one hears, and one does hear it on every hand, how poor are Englishmen, one has in this land question some explanation of the secret.”[12] Chapter V The rich man’s children--His sons’ education at school and university--His daughters--Love and marriage--Refinement of the aristocracy--Their alliance with the plutocracy--Smart society--Its general characteristics.