on four pounds worth of goods. As for the
working classes, Philpot, Harlow and Easton, having each consumed the
pound's worth of necessaries they had bought with their wages, they
were again in precisely the same condition as when they started
work--they had nothing.

This process was repeated several times: for each week's work the
producers were paid their wages. They kept on working and spending all
their earnings. The kind-hearted capitalist consumed twice as much as
any one of them and his pile of wealth continually increased. In a
little while--reckoning the little squares at their market value of one
pound each--he was worth about one hundred pounds, and the working
classes were still in the same condition as when they began, and were
still tearing into their work as if their lives depended upon it.

After a while the rest of the crowd began to laugh, and their merriment
increased when the kind-hearted capitalist, just after having sold a
pound's worth of necessaries to each of his workers, suddenly took
their tools--the Machinery of Production--the knives away from them,
and informed them that as owing to Over Production all his store-houses
were glutted with the necessaries of life, he had decided to close down
the works.

'Well, and wot the bloody 'ell are we to do now?' demanded Philpot.

'That's not my business,' replied the kind-hearted capitalist. 'I've
paid you your wages, and provided you with Plenty of Work for a long
time past. I have no more work for you to do at present. Come round
again in a few months' time and I'll see what I can do for you.'

'But what about the necessaries of life?' demanded Harlow. 'We must
have something to eat.'

'Of course you must,' replied the capitalist, affably; 'and I shall be
very pleased to sell you some.'

'But we ain't got no bloody money!'

'Well, you can't expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You
didn't work for me for nothing, you know. I paid you for your work and
you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me.
Look how I have got on by being thrifty!'

The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the rest of the crowd
only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the
kind-hearted Capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the
necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be
allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and even
threatened to take some