rge a
share as possible for themselves and in allotting as small a share as
possible to others. If one contributor takes less, so far from it
being evident that the gain will go to some one who has put something
in and has as good a right as himself, it may go to some one who has
put in nothing and has no right at all. If another claims more, he may
secure it, without plundering a fellow-worker, at the expense of a
sleeping partner who is believed to plunder both. In practice, since
there is no clear principle determining what they ought to take, both
take all that they can get.

In such circumstances denunciations of the producer for exploiting the
consumer miss the mark. They are inevitably regarded as an economic
version of the military device used by armies which advance behind a
screen of women and children, and then protest at the brutality of the
enemy in shooting non-combatants. They are interpreted as evidence,
not that a section of the producers are exploiting the remainder, but
that a minority of property-owners, which is in opposition to {133}
both, can use its economic power to make efforts directed against those
who consume much and produce little rebound on those who consume little
and produce much. And the grievance, of which the Press makes so much,
that some workers may be taking too large a share compared with others,
is masked by the much greater grievance, of which it says nothing
whatever, that some idlers take any share at all. The abolition of
payments which are made without any corresponding economic service is
thus one of the indispensable conditions both of economic efficiency
and industrial peace, because their existence prevents different
classes of workers from restraining each other, by uniting them all
against the common enemy. Either the principle of industry is that of
function, in which case slack work is only less immoral than no work at
all; or it is that of grab, in which case there is no morality in the
matter. But it cannot be both. And it is useless either for
property-owners or for Governments to lament the mote in the eye of the
trade unions as long as, by insisting on the maintenance of
functionless property, they decline to remove the beam in their own.

The truth is that only workers can prevent the abuse of power by
workers, because only workers are recognized as possessing any title to
have their claims considered. And the first step to preventing the
exploita