f efficiency and of
good manners and of human respect is very largely the task of the middle
classes. Whereas the breaking down of such ideals is, in the present
posture of society, the avowed or unavowed intention of a considerable
portion of laboring men and aristocrats. The scornful retort of the
Socialist is at hand: "Of course the middle classes are shrewd enough to
practice the virtues that pay." Into this familiar moral bog that there
are as many kinds of morality as there are economic conditions of mankind,
I do not consent to plunge. I need only say that the so-called middle
class virtues would pay a workman or a lord quite as well as they do a
bourgeois. Moreover, while workmen and lords are prone to scorn the
calculating virtues of the middle classes, there is no indication that the
_bourgeoisie_ has selfishly tried to keep its virtues to itself. On the
contrary there is positive rejoicing in the middle classes over a workman
who deigns to keep a contract, and an aristocrat who perceives the duty of
paying a debt. In fine we of the middle classes need no more be ashamed of
our highly unpicturesque virtues than we are of our inconspicuous wealth.

So far from being in danger of suppression, we middling rich people are
likely to last longer than the capitalists who exploit us in practice, and
the workmen who exploit us on principle. Theoretically, and perhaps
practically, the very rich are in danger of expropriation. Theoretically
the course of invention may limit or almost abolish all but the higher
grades of labor. The need of the more skilful sort of service in the
professions, in manufacture, in agency of all sorts, is sure to persist.
The socialists expect to get such service for much less than it at present
brings, that is to make us poor and yet keep us working. Such a scheme
must break down, not through the refusal of the middling rich to keep at
work;--for I think there is loyalty enough to the work itself to keep most
necessary activities going after a fashion, even under the most untoward
conditions;--but because to make us poor is to destroy the conditions
under which we can efficiently render a somewhat exceptional service. Our
wealth is not an extraneous thing that can be readily added or taken away.
It is our possibility of self-education and of professional improvement,
it is the medium in which we can work, it is our hope of children. To take
away our wealth is to maim us. There is nothing humili