s went bankrupt. They
were swallowed up by the bigger fish, Jonathan. But assume it
otherwise, assume that the grandfather of some rich man of the present
day laid the foundation of the family fortune in the manner described,
don't you see that the system of robbing the worker of his product was
already established; that you must go back to the beginning of the
_system_?

And when you trace capital back to its origin, my friend, you will
always come to war or robbery. You can trace it back to the forcible
taking of the land away from the people. When the machine came,
bringing with it an industrial revolution, it was by the wealthy and
the ruthless that the machine was owned, not by the poor toilers. In
other words, my friends, there was simply a continuance of the old
rule of a class of overlords, under another name.

If the abstinence theory is foolish, even more foolish is the notion
that profits are the reward of managing ability, the wages of
superintendence. Under primitive capitalism there was some
justification for this view.

It was impossible to deny that the owner of a factory did manage it,
that he was the superintendent, entitled as such to some reward. It
was easy enough to say that he got a disproportionate share, but who
was to decide just what his fair share would be?

But when capitalism developed and became impersonal that idea of the
nature of profits was killed. When companies were organized they
employed salaried managers, _whose salaries were paid before profits
were reckoned at all_. To-day I can own shares in China and Australia
while living all the time in the United States. Even though I have
never been to those countries, nor seen the property I am a
shareholder in, I shall get my profits just the same. A lunatic may
own shares in a thousand companies and, though he is confined in a
madhouse, his shares of stock will still bring a profit to his
guardians in his name.

When Mr. Rockefeller was summoned to court in Chicago last year, he
stated on oath that he could not tell anything about the business of
the Standard Oil Company, not having had anything to do with the
business for several years past. But he gets his profits just the
same, showing how foolish it is to talk of profits as being the reward
of managing ability and the wages of superintendence.

Now, Jonathan, I have explained to you pretty fully what Socialism is
when considered as a philosophy of social evolution. I have al