ur wealth."

For the collectivist expenditures, intended to increase the national
product through governmental enterprises for the promotion of industry,
and for raising the industrial efficiency of the workers, would be
introduced gradually, and would soon be accompanied by results which
would show that they paid financially. And finally, even if railways and
monopolies were nationalized and their profits as well as _all_ the
future rise in land value went to the State to be used for these
purposes, as Mr. Churchill hopes, and even if a method could be found by
which a large part of the income of the idle rich would be confiscated
without touching the active capital of the merchant and manufacturer,
the position of the latter classes, through this policy, might become
still more superior relatively to that of the masses than it is at
present. The industrial capitalists might even control a larger share of
the national income and exercise a still more powerful influence over
the State than they do to-day.

The classes that the more or less collectivist budgets of 1910 and 1911
actually do favor, those whose economic and political power they
actually do increase, are the small and middle-sized capitalists and
even the larger capitalists other than landlords and monopolists. The
great mass of income taxpayers, business men, farmers, and the
professional classes with incomes from about L200 to L3000 ($1000 to
$15,000) are given every encouragement, while those with somewhat larger
incomes are only slightly discriminated against on the surface, in the
incidence of the taxes, and not at all when we inquire into the ways in
which the taxes are being expended. Certainly nothing is being done that
will "appreciably affect the status or style of living of any class in
the United Kingdom," or that will check materially the enormous rise of
this "upper middle" class both in wealth and numbers--for the income tax
payers have doubled their income in a little more than a decade, until
it has reached the total of more than a billion pounds a year. And
surely no tendency could be more diametrically opposed to a Socialism
whose purpose it is to improve the _relative_ position of the "lower
middle" and working classes.

While the new reform programs of the various parties are in general
agreement in all countries, in that they are all collectivist, and favor
as a rule the same social classes, there is much controversy as to
names, whe