f the world, but we have done it at _an appalling waste of
human material_. We have drawn upon the robust vitality of the
rural areas of Great Britain, and especially Ireland, and spent its
energies recklessly in the devitalizing atmosphere of urban
factories and workshops as if the supply were inexhaustible. We are
now beginning to realize that we have been spending _our capital_,
at a disastrous rate, and it is time we should take a real,
concerted, national effort to replenish it. I put forward this
proposal, not a very extravagant one, _as a beginning_." (My
italics.)[50]

In order to do away with the economic waste of profitable "human
material" and the still more serious exhaustion of the supply, the
propertyless wage earner or salaried man for the first time obtains a
definite status in the official political economy; he becomes the
property of the nation viewed "as a business firm," a part of "our"
capital. His position was much like a peasant or a laborer during the
formation of the feudal system. To obtain any status at all, to become
half free he had to become somebody's "man." Now he is the "man," the
industrial asset, of the government. This paternal attitude towards the
individual, however, is not at all similar to the paternalist attitude
towards capital. While the individual capitalist often does not object
to having his capital reckoned as a part of the resources of a
government which capitalists as a class control,--roughly speaking in
proportion to their wealth,--we can picture his protests if either _his_
personal activity or ability or _his_ private income were similarly
viewed as dependent for their free use and development on the benevolent
patronage of the State. However, for the _workers_ to become an asset of
the State, even while the latter is still viewed primarily as a
commercial institution and remains in the hands of the business class,
is undoubtedly a revolutionary advance.

Mr. Winston Churchill also gives, as the basis for the whole program,
the need of putting an end to that "waste of earning power" and of "the
stamina, the virtue, safety, and honor of the British race," that is due
to existing poverty and economic maladjustment.[51] Mr. John A. Hobson,
a prominent economist and radical, shows that the purpose of the "New
Liberalism" is the full development of "the productive resources of our
land and labor,"[52] and denies that this bro