“There is no nation in the world that has so acute a sense of the value, almost the necessity of wealth for human intercourse as the English nation.... In England they silently accept the maxim, ‘a large income is a necessary of life,’ and they class each other according to the scale of their establishments, looking up with unfeigned reverence to those who have many servants, many horses, and gigantic houses, where great hospitality is dispensed.”[17] In the economic structure, just as in an architectural structure, what should be aimed at is a proper relation between weights and supports. One section of our social building is too heavily weighted and there is an unnecessary waste of material in supplying the adequate supports and buttresses to meet the stress, which is all on the one side. It is this want of balance and disproportionate pressure which tends very materially to imperil the whole edifice. Does it amount to a national danger? and if so, how can it be warded off? are questions that may well be asked. But this would carry us too far and involve a discussion as to the extent to which legislation or taxation or an improved system of education might shield us from any risks. It lies outside the scope of our present argument, which must be confined to demonstrating the existence and universal nature of the passion, its unjustifiable claims and evil consequences. How to put a stop to the waste caused by an unproductive surplus getting piled up in the hands of the rich is nevertheless admitted by modern economists to be a matter that urgently needs solution. “The principal problem of modern industrial civilisation,” says Mr. J. A. Hobson, “consists in devising measures to secure that the whole of the industrial surplus shall be economically applied to the purposes of industrial and social progress instead of passing in the shape of unearned increment to the owners of the factors of production whose activities are depressed, not stimulated by such payments.”[18] Chapter VIII The problem of riches--Necessity for scientific investigation into the lives of the rich--Interdependence of riches and poverty--Analysis of expenditure on houses, servants, clothes, food, amusements--Impressions of a poor crowd and a rich crowd--Tragedies.