hese rentiers, large and small, are wholly unoccupied or only half
occupied. They are sleeping partners, briefless barristers, professors
of professions which do not exist. To these income-receivers or
rentiers, whom Schulze-Gaevernitz estimates at a million, must be added
enormous numbers of servants and lackeys, who are paid, though
indirectly, from the Kimberley mines and investments in the Argentine.
Upon the industry of the backward countries these idle and semi-idle
people make increasing demands, and industry becomes a production of
luxuries. In the meantime the nation falls behind in its competition
with more purely industrial countries like Germany and the United
States. In the machine industry, in ship-building, in applied
chemistry England does not hold her own.[6] Her technique of
production, her methods in commerce and banking become old-fashioned
and ineffective; her invention (as measured by the issuance of patents)
does not keep pace with that of her chief competitors. And all this
conservatism does not inhere in the British character (for formerly the
Briton revolutionised the world) but is attributable to the fact that
Great Britain is pre-eminently a _Rentnerstaat_, a country of
pensioners and creditors, increasingly independent and careless of its
foreign export, and of the industries which formerly kept that export
going.[7]

{135}

There is some exaggeration but also much truth in this description of a
_Rentnerstaat_. Psychologically the account fits the Englishman less
exactly than the Frenchman, who is industrially less venturesome.
Moreover from the individual's view-point it makes little difference
whether his fixed income is derived from abroad or at home.
Economically, however, the influence of a large class of individuals
living by foreign industry is difficult to exaggerate. Their interests
are abroad; at home they are concerned chiefly with the maintenance of
low prices. The nation becomes in a sense parasitic, living without
effort upon the "lesser breeds" in all parts of the world.

Whatever its evil results, however, there is little reason to believe
that any nation will willingly surrender the income on its foreign
investments or cease to export new capital if conditions are
favourable. The interest-receiving nations are the world's
aristocrats, happy in their favoured position, and if they can thus
live partly on their past labour they see no reason for receiving less
or