ing, as we have learned in the foregoing
pages, but private property as an institution is immoral in itself and
ought to be abolished. No man has a right to be rich; no man can
become rich honestly. Hence it follows that all rich men are robbers,
thieves, and swindlers. "The poor owe no duty to the rich, unless it
be the duty which an honest man owes to the thief who has robbed him.
The rich have no right to any of their possessions, for there is but
one right, and that is the right of the labourer to the fruits of his
labour, and the rich do not labour. No man has any right to be rich.
No man ever yet became rich by fair means. No man ever became rich by
his own industry."[241] "No man or class of men made the first kind of
wealth, such as land, minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class
of men should be allowed to call these things their own."[242] As
private property is immoral in itself, it is doubly immoral to lend
out such property and to charge rent or interest for the use of it.
Mr. G.J. Wardle, M.P., said, in a recent speech at Glasgow, that rent
"was social immorality, and the State or society which allowed crimes
of that kind to go on unpunished could never be a moral society. The
same thing applied to interest on money. From the moral standpoint
interest is unearned by the man who gets it, and it does not matter
how that is cloaked over, that is the fact. Nowadays it was counted
the greatest virtue to lend at so much per cent. That was a socially
immoral proceeding, and because it was socially immoral it ate like a
canker into the heart of society. As Socialists they objected to
profit."[243]

There are Socialists who preach the same doctrine of immorality and
criminality of private property in more decided terms. They assert
that it is criminal and immoral to make a profit as a compensation for
the work of directing and taking heavy capital risks in productive
business because such profits are opposed to the principle, "The
labourer is entitled to the whole product of his labour" (see page
61). "A man has a 'right' to that which he has produced by the unaided
exercise of his own faculties; but he has not a right to that which is
not produced by his own unaided faculties; nor to the whole of that
which has been produced by his faculties aided by the faculties of
another man."[244] "Everyone who pockets gains without rendering an
equivalent to society is a criminal. Every millionaire is a criminal.
Every