That our industrial system is based upon profits, and that a failure of profits would lead to its collapse, will be admitted by anyone. But how could profits ever fail? the reader asks. Will not the soil always produce? And does not every man who comes into the world bring a pair of hands with him, to produce things and earn his living? And so, can there not always be profitable exchange? There could, I answer, provided that the various pairs of hands were to remain upon equal terms. But suppose that one pair were to get some advantage over the other pairs, and use that advantage to get constantly increasing advantage; might there not then come a time when the other pairs, having less and less, were finally unable to furnish as much profits as were necessary? We began the economic battle in this country upon equal terms. Some got the advantage and became masters, the others becoming wage-workers. This advantage—that is, capital—brought constantly increasing advantage—profit, rent, interest; and those who had not the advantage stayed meanwhile just where they were—they got enough to live on, and no more. Numerous exceptions to this do not in the least disturb the main facts—that as a class the wage-workers stayed wage-workers, and the masters stayed masters. Neither does the fact that wages rose constantly in the least disturb the main fact, for the cost of living rose also; the wage-worker got his living then, and he gets it now. And meanwhile, according to the way of nature, and in spite of the outcry of moralists and old-fashioned statesmen, the strong went on growing stronger, and fighting among each other, the victors growing ten times stronger yet; until now we have come to a stage where, industrially speaking, we are a nation of eighty million pygmies and a dozen giants. Nor is the work quite done yet—it is going straight on, in spite of anti-trust decisions and the labour of the “muckrake man”—and within a very few more years the dozen giants will be but one giant. The dozen, meanwhile, are giants, and they are that because the industrial opportunities of the nation are their property. They are the nation, economically speaking; they own its railroads and telegraphs, its coal mines, oil fields, factories and stores. And they grant to the eighty millions of the nation the right to these opportunities and a chance to earn their living upon one certain definite condition—that of what they produce, they receive only a part, yielding up the balance to be “profits.”