even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The
banks hasten to lend him another L20,000, especially if he has a
reputation for "business ability"; and with this round sum he can
command the labour of five hundred hands.

If all the men and women in the countryside had their daily bread
assured, and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our
capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one
produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more?

Unhappily--we know it all too well--the poor quarters of our towns and
the neighbouring villages are full of needy wretches, whose children
clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well finished, the workers
hasten to offer themselves. Where a hundred are required three hundred
besiege the doors, and from the time his mill is started, the owner, if
he only has average business capacities, will clear L40 a year out of
each mill-hand he employs.

He is thus able to lay by a snug little fortune; and if he chooses a
lucrative trade, and has "business talents," he will soon increase his
income by doubling the number of men he exploits.

So he becomes a personage of importance. He can afford to give dinners
to other personages--to the local magnates, the civic, legal, and
political dignitaries. With his money he can "marry money"; by and by he
may pick and choose places for his children, and later on perhaps get
something good from the Government--a contract for the army or for the
police. His gold breeds gold; till at last a war, or even a rumour of
war, or a speculation on the Stock Exchange, gives him his great
opportunity.

Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the United States are (as
Henry George has shown in his "Social Problems") the result of knavery
on a large scale, assisted by the State. In Europe, nine-tenths of the
fortunes made in our monarchies and republics have the same origin.
There are not two ways of becoming a millionaire.

This is the secret of wealth: find the starving and destitute, pay them
half a crown, and make them produce five shillings worth in the day,
amass a fortune by these means, and then increase it by some lucky
speculation, made with the help of the State.

Need we go on to speak of small fortunes attributed by the economists to
forethought and frugality, when we know that mere saving in itself
brings in nothing, so long as the pence saved are not used to exploit
the famishing