en applied to natural objects. _That statement
is not true._ He even dared say that a great and profound thinker like
Karl Marx believed and taught that silly notion. The newspapers of
America hailed Mr. Mallock as the long-looked-for conqueror of Marx
and his followers. They thought he had demolished Socialism. But did
they know that they were resting their case upon a _lie_, I wonder?
That Marx never for a moment believed such a thing; that he went out
of his way to explain that he did not?

I don't want you to try to read the works of Marx, my friend--at
least, not yet: _Capital_, his greatest work, is a very difficult
book, in three large volumes. But if you will go into the public
library and get the first volume in English translation, and turn to
page 145, you will read the following words:

"By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood the
aggregate of those _mental and physical_ capabilities existing in a
human being, which he exercises when he produces a use-value of any
description."[2]

I think you will agree, Jonathan, that that statement fully justifies
all that I have said concerning Mr. Mallock. I think you will agree,
too, that it is a very clear and intelligible definition, which any
man of fair sense can understand. Now, by way of contrast, I want you
to read one of Mr. Mallock's definitions. Please bear in mind that Mr.
Mallock is an English "scholar," by many regarded as a very clear
thinker. This is how he defines labor:

"_Labor means the faculties of the individual applied to his own
labor._"

I have never yet been able to find anybody who could make sense out of
that definition, Jonathan, though I have submitted it to a good many
people, among them several college professors. It does not mean
anything. The fifty-seven letters contained in that sentence would
mean just as much if you put them in a bag, shook them up, and then
put them on paper just as they happened to fall out of the bag. Mr.
Mallock's English, his veracity and his logic are all equally weak and
defective.

I don't think that Mr. Mallock is worthy of your consideration,
Jonathan, but if you are interested in reading what he said about
Socialism in the lectures I have been referring to, they are published
in a volume entitled, _A Critical Examination of Socialism_. You can
get the book in the library: they will be sure to have it there,
because it is against Socialism. But I want you to buy a little book
by Mo