oyment to millions and start the
wheels moving again. If the promoters of such corporations presently
earn huge fortunes for themselves society is none the worse: and in any
case, humanity being what it is, they will hand back a vast part of what
they have acquired in return for LL.D. degrees, or bits of blue ribbon,
or companionships of the Bath, or whatever kind of glass bead fits the
fancy of the retired millionaire.

The next thing to be done, then, is to "fire" the government officials
and to bring back the profiteer. As to which officials are to be fired
first it doesn't matter much. In England people have been greatly
perturbed as to the use to be made of such instruments as the "Geddes
Axe": the edge of the axe of dismissal seems so terribly sharp. But
there is no need to worry. If the edge of the axe is too sharp, hit with
the back of it.

As to the profiteer, bring him back. He is really just the same person
who a few years ago was called a Captain of Industry and an Empire
Builder and a Nation Maker. It is the times that have changed, not the
man. He is there still, just as greedy and rapacious as ever, but no
greedier: and we have just the same social need of his greed as a motive
power in industry as we ever had, and indeed a worse need than before.

We need him not only in business but in the whole setting of life, or
if not him personally, we need the eager, selfish, but reliant spirit
of the man who looks after himself and doesn't want to have a spoon-fed
education and a government job alternating with a government dole, and
a set of morals framed for him by a Board of Censors. Bring back the
profiteer: fetch him from the Riviera, from his country-place on the
Hudson, or from whatever spot to which he has withdrawn with his tin
box full of victory bonds. If need be, go and pick him out of the
penitentiary, take the stripes off him and tell him to get busy again.
Show him the map of the world and ask him to pick out a few likely
spots. The trained greed of the rascal will find them in a moment.
Then write him out a concession for coal in Asia Minor or oil in the
Mackenzie Basin or for irrigation in Mesopotamia. The ink will hardly
be dry on it before the capital will begin to flow in: it will come from
all kinds of places whence the government could never coax it and where
the tax-gatherer could never find it. Only promise that it is not going
to be taxed out of existence and the stream of capital which