This happens to some extent at present. We are accustomed to think that monarchs, as a class, should receive more than manual laborers; and as a rule they do. But monarchs receive much less than Steel Kings and Pork Barons; and unskilled laborers receive more than great mathematicians, who, as such, receive nothing, and have to live by poorly paid professorships. Clergymen get very little; and racing bookmakers get a good deal. Nobody can determine what they ought to get; yet nobody can defend what they do get on any rational ground. Those who think it a matter of course that scavengers should receive less than bank managers cannot say how much less, without which determination their opinion can have no effect in a political settlement of distribution. The main argument for enriching a class is that it enabled them to produce an idolatrous illusion of superiority which gives them authority, which is necessary in organizing society. But in modern society the persons in authority are often much poorer in money than those whom they command. Illustrative cases. Real authority has nothing to do with money. 35 13 LAISSER-FAIRE Letting things alone is now called letting them slide: an admission that they will not stay where they are. Change is a law of nature; and when parliaments neglect it and Churches try to ignore it, the effect is not to avert the changes but to make them hasty, ill-considered, and often catastrophic. Unless laws and Articles of Religion change as often and as quickly as the activities they control, a strain is set up which, if not relieved by the prevalence of up-to-date ideas in government and the Churches, must wreck civilization. 38 14 HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? The study of poverty. Poverty does not produce unhappiness: it produces degradation: that is why it is dangerous to society. Its evils are infectious, and cannot be avoided by any possible isolation of the rich. The attractions of poverty. The folly of tolerating it as a punishment. We cannot afford to have the poor always with us. The statute of Elizabeth. What constitutes poverty. The sufferings of the rich. They are avoidable only by voluntarily foregoing idleness and gluttony: that is, foregoing the only privileges that riches confer. Poor and rich being equally objectionable, the question arises how much is enough? What is enough for savage life. What was enough for our grandmothers is not enough for ourselves. There is no limit to the higher requirements of mankind. The question is therefore unanswerable as applied to civilized life. The problem of distribution cannot be solved by giving everyone enough: nobody can ever have enough of everything. But it is possible to give everybody the same. 41 15 WHAT WE SHOULD BUY FIRST