If you say that this is an unlovely person the answer is that sometimes he is and sometimes he is not. If you say he is selfish the reply is that we are all selfish--he merely being able to make his selfishness effective. If you say he accumulates by devious ways and by grinding the face of the poor the reply is that sometimes he does and sometimes he does not. In these human aspects he is about like the rest of us. He it is who makes happiness and helpfulness possible. But to these and all other assaults upon the character and methods of the accumulating man there is one general reply and that is that from the economic standpoint they are of no consequence whatever. It makes no economic difference what he is or what he does so only that he performs his accumulating office. The one essential fact is that he assembles within his grasp the savings of Society, prevents their dissipation in personal indulgence, applies them to beneficial use, and enables the laborer to produce under the direction of the Captain of Industry by means of the devices of the inventor applied to the formulas of the scientist what is needful for the welfare of mankind--and to live while he is doing it. It is the accumulating man impelled by his instinct, or if you please his lust, for wealth and power who makes it possible for poor men to live in any great number. If he happens also to be a Captain of Industry, which usually he is not, it is merely one middleman cut out. His essential function is that of the money-grabber. It is by his exercise of that function that most of us exist. The third count in the indictment of Socialism is that by obliterating the Capitalist, accumulating by interest, profit, rent, and the exploitation of Nature for private gain, it would make life impossible to half the population of the world and not worth living to the fittest who should manage to survive. I trust I make myself understood for there is more and worse to come. This discussion is necessarily didactic and assertive for it is impossible to prove or disprove any of these postulates. It is for that reason, and the lack of time that I cite no instances. They would be merely illustrative and not probative, for the human intellect is unequal to any adequate inductive study of the subject, and human life is too short to classify, master and digest the data even if they could be assembled. All that can be done is to state conclusions reached upon such observation and experience as is to each of us available and commend them to the judgment of others upon their observation and experience. Whatever can be proved at all can be reduced to a syllogism but agreement upon premises is in this case impossible.