ic plane alone is considered,
there is not one society but two, which dwell together in uneasy
juxtaposition, like Sinbad and the Old Man of the Sea, but which in
spirit, in ideals, and in economic interest, are worlds asunder. There
is the society of those who live by labor, whatever their craft or
profession, and the society of those who live on it. All the latter
cannot command the sacrifices or the loyalty which are due to the
former, for they have no title which will bear inspection. The
instinct to ignore that tragic division instead of ending it is
amiable, and sometimes generous. But it is a sentimentality which is
like the morbid optimism of the consumptive who dares not admit even to
himself the virulence of his disease. As long as the division exists,
the general body of workers, while it may suffer from the struggles of
any one group within it, nevertheless supports them by its sympathy,
because all are interested in the results of the contest carried on by
each. Different sections of workers will exercise mutual restraint
only when the termination of the {136} struggle leaves them face to
face with each other, and not as now, with the common enemy. The ideal
of a united society in which no one group uses its power to encroach
upon the standards of another is, in short, unattainable, except
through the preliminary abolition of functionless property.

Those to whom a leisure class is part of an immutable order without
which civilization is inconceivable, dare not admit, even to
themselves, that the world is poorer, not richer, because of its
existence. So, when, as now it is important that productive energy
should be fully used, they stamp and cry, and write to _The Times_
about the necessity for increased production, though all the time they
themselves, their way of life and expenditure, and their very existence
as a leisure class, are among the causes why production is not
increased. In all their economic plans they make one reservation,
that, however necessitous the world may be, it shall still support
them. But men who work do not make that reservation, nor is there any
reason why they should; and appeals to them to produce more wealth
because the public needs it usually fall upon deaf ears, even when such
appeals are not involved in the ignorance and misapprehensions which
often characterize them.

For the workman is not the servant of the consumer, for whose sake
greater production is demand