wo
hundred and fifty thousand are distributed well or ill, which have not
been produced by the efforts of these men themselves, but are due to the
efforts of a class which is definitely outside their own.[21] If, then,
it is contended that the just reward of labour is that total of wealth
which labour itself produces, the idea that labour, in respect of its
pecuniary remuneration, is, under present conditions, the victim of any
general wrong, is so far from having any justification in fact that it
only touches fact at all by representing a direct inversion of it.
Labour, as a whole, does not, under existing conditions, get less than
it produces.[22] It gets a very great deal more. If, therefore, the
claims of labour are based on, and limited to, the amount of wealth
which is produced by labour itself--that is to say, the total which it
would now produce were the faculties of the directing and organising
minority paralysed--what labour, thus appropriating the entire product,
would receive, would be far less, not more, than what it actually
receives to-day. Instead of defrauding it of any part of its due, the
existing system is treating it with an extreme and even wanton
generosity.

Is it, then, here contended, many readers will ask, that if matters are
determined by ideal justice, or anything like practical wisdom, the
remuneration of labour in general ought henceforth to be lessened, or at
all events precluded from any possibility of increase? Is it contended
that the employing and directing class should attempt or even desire to
take back from those directed by it every increment of wealth possessed
by them which is not produced by themselves? If any one thinks that such
is the conclusion which is here suggested, let him suspend his opinion
until, as we shall do in another chapter, we return to the subject and
deal with it in a more comprehensive way. Our conclusion, as for the
moment we must now be content to leave it, is not that the labourers
have not a claim, practically valid, to the only portion of their income
which has any tendency to grow, but merely that they should understand
the source from which this portion is drawn--a source which consists of
the efforts of other men, not of their own.

And now, before we return to this particular question, we will go on to
deal with another which to a certain extent overlaps it, but is narrower
in its compass, and seems, for that very reason, to many minds of
greater