Clearly its greatest difficulty is due to the fact that we are likely to have so great an Income Tax to pay for war, that to pay also for welfare may be beyond the willingness of the public. _CHAPTER VII_ _USURY_ Ruskin’s attack upon the taking of interest for capital is the part of his doctrine which goes deepest into our business system. It has in consequence weakened his influence, and has not, even by himself, been put into practice in this country. But he spent much of his strength upon it in his later years. In _Munera Pulveris_, written in 1862, we find him stating[92] that Usury is “merely taking an exorbitant sum for the use of anything"--“the essence of the usury being that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity or necessity, and not as due reward for labour,” and he therefore includes high profits for middlemen under the term: but in later editions he adds a footnote to say that Mr. W. C. Sillar[93] has since shown him that the payment of any interest at all is unjustifiable, and is real usury. It is well to distinguish carefully between Interest and Profits. The business man who exploits foreign concessions, and who stimulates wars, may or may not be a capitalist. He may be using other people’s capital. He makes his profit as reward for his work, his luck, his enterprise, and an often risky responsibility. The capitalist, properly so called, is, on the other hand, an investor who simply takes his interest. Often, doubtless, one man fills both parts, but in general theoretical discussion they should be kept separate. Interest, even if unavoidable, tends to increase the inequalities of distribution, and beyond a certain point it becomes a social danger, and may even become a disease in the body politic. It is one of the least desirable consequences of the system of private property; but it is, I fear, an inherent part of it--to be got rid of only under a communal system where private property does not exist. His new convictions did not take an absorbing hold on Ruskin’s mind for some years. In September, 1872, he writes in _Fors_, Letter XXI, §§ 18, 19, in reply to a remonstrance from Mr. Sillar: “I am very careless about such minor matters as the present conditions of ... banking. I hold bank stock simply because I suppose it to be safer than any other stock, and I take the interest of it because, though taking interest is, in the abstract, as wrong as war, the entire fabric of society is at present so connected with both usury and war, that it is not possible violently to withdraw, nor wisely to set example of withdrawing, from either evil.” “Denunciations of interest are much beside the mark unless they are accompanied with some explanation of the manner in which borrowing and lending, when necessary, can be carried on without it.” There is a passage to the same effect in the notes to _Fors_, Letter XLIII, written in July, 1874.