not less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the work of labor
which was not free to consume in immediate enjoyment the full equivalent
of its efforts.

Thus this remarkable system depended for its growth on a double bluff or
deception. On the one hand the laboring classes accepted from ignorance
or powerlessness, or were compelled, persuaded, or cajoled by custom,
convention, authority, and the well-established order of Society into
accepting, a situation in which they could call their own very little of
the cake that they and Nature and the capitalists were co-operating to
produce. And on the other hand the capitalist classes were allowed to
call the best part of the cake theirs and were theoretically free to
consume it, on the tacit underlying condition that they consumed very
little of it in practice. The duty of "saving" became nine-tenths of
virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion. There
grew round the non-consumption of the cake all those instincts of
puritanism which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world and
has neglected the arts of production as well as those of enjoyment. And
so the cake increased; but to what end was not clearly contemplated.
Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to defer, and to
cultivate the pleasures of security and anticipation. Saving was for old
age or for your children; but this was only in theory,--the virtue of
the cake was that it was never to be consumed, neither by you nor by
your children after you.

In writing thus I do not necessarily disparage the practices of that
generation. In the unconscious recesses of its being Society knew what
it was about. The cake was really very small in proportion to the
appetites of consumption, and no one, if it were shared all round, would
be much the better off by the cutting of it. Society was working not
for the small pleasures of to-day but for the future security and
improvement of the race,--in fact for "progress." If only the cake were
not cut but was allowed to grow in the geometrical proportion predicted
by Malthus of population, but not less true of compound interest,
perhaps a day might come when there would at last be enough to go round,
and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of _our_ labors. In
that day overwork, overcrowding, and underfeeding would have come to an
end, and men, secure of the comforts and necessities of the body, could
proceed to the nobler exercises of their