But then you say: If this be true, if two hours’ work will produce everything, how can everybody go on working twelve hours forever? They can’t; and that is just why I am writing this book. They can do it only until they have filled the needs, first of themselves, then of all the Filipinos and Chinamen, Hottentots and Esquimaux who have money to buy anything—and then until they have filled all the factories, warehouses and stores of the country to overflowing. Then they cannot do one single thing more; then they are out of work. They can go on so long as their masters can find a market in which to sell their product at a profit; then they have to stop. And then suddenly (_instantly_, God help them!) they have to take their choice between two alternatives—between an Industrial Republic, and a political empire. Either they will hear Prince Kropotkin, or they will hear Mr. Brooks Adams. Either they will take the instruments and means of production and produce for use and not for profit; or else they will forge themselves into an engine of war to be wielded by a military despot. In that case, they will fling themselves upon China and Japan, and seize northern China, “the greatest prize of modern times.” They will enter upon a career of empire, and by the wholesale slaughter of war they will keep down population, while at the same time by the wholesale destruction of war they keep down the surplus of products. So there will be more work for the workers for a time, and more profits for the masters for a time; until what wealth there is in northern China has also been concentrated and possessed, when once more there will begin distress. By that time, however, we shall have an hereditary aristocracy strongly intrenched, and a proletariat degraded beyond recall; so that our riots will end in mere slaughter and waste, and we shall never again see freedom. We shall run then the whole course of the Roman Empire—of frenzied profligacy among the wealthy, and beastly ferocity among the populace: until at last we fall into imbecility, and are overwhelmed by some new, clean race which the strong heart of nature has poured out. Empires have risen and have fallen; but it has not been, as Mr. Adams asserts, because of “variations of trade routes,” but solely because of wealth-concentration, with its ensuing corruption, ignorance and brutality among the populace, and avarice and luxury among the rich. Let the reader take Froude’s “Cæsar,” and read, in the first chapter, his picture of the last days of the Roman Republic: