I don't want you to try to read the works of Marx, my friend--at least, not yet: _Capital_, his greatest work, is a very difficult book, in three large volumes. But if you will go into the public library and get the first volume in English translation, and turn to page 145, you will read the following words: "By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those _mental and physical_ capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises when he produces a use-value of any description."[2] I think you will agree, Jonathan, that that statement fully justifies all that I have said concerning Mr. Mallock. I think you will agree, too, that it is a very clear and intelligible definition, which any man of fair sense can understand. Now, by way of contrast, I want you to read one of Mr. Mallock's definitions. Please bear in mind that Mr. Mallock is an English "scholar," by many regarded as a very clear thinker. This is how he defines labor: "_Labor means the faculties of the individual applied to his own labor._" I have never yet been able to find anybody who could make sense out of that definition, Jonathan, though I have submitted it to a good many people, among them several college professors. It does not mean anything. The fifty-seven letters contained in that sentence would mean just as much if you put them in a bag, shook them up, and then put them on paper just as they happened to fall out of the bag. Mr. Mallock's English, his veracity and his logic are all equally weak and defective. I don't think that Mr. Mallock is worthy of your consideration, Jonathan, but if you are interested in reading what he said about Socialism in the lectures I have been referring to, they are published in a volume entitled, _A Critical Examination of Socialism_. You can get the book in the library: they will be sure to have it there, because it is against Socialism. But I want you to buy a little book by Morris Hillquit, called _Mr. Mallock's "Ability,"_ and read it carefully. It costs only ten cents--and you will get more amusement reading the careful and scholarly dissection of Mallock than you could get in a dime show anywhere. If you will read my own reply to Mr. Mallock, in my little book _Capitalist and Laborer_, I shall not think the worse of you for doing so. Now, let us look at the division of the wealth. It is all produced by labor of manual workers and brain workers applied to natural objects which no man made. I am not going to weary you with figures, Jonathan, because you are not a statistician. I am going to take the statistics and make them as simple as I can for you--and tell you where you can find the statistics if you ever feel inclined to try your hand upon them.