ed? Quite simply and very easily--by
plunder. Mr. Sidney Webb, like most "scientific" Socialists, is a
loose and shallow thinker. He forgets in his calculations that
stubborn little item--human nature. He forgets that nobody can become
richer by transferring money from the right pocket to the left. If you
plunder all capitalists and all middlemen, the workers will certainly
not be better off. Owing to the absence of direct self-interest, the
management by salaried officials will be inefficient. All experience
of management by public bodies through officials shows that public
enterprise is far more wasteful and far less efficient than private
enterprise; that in official management routine, sloth, waste,
irresponsibility, nepotism, favouritism, and often peculation too,
become supreme. Besides, far more money than is wasted now by
capitalists on themselves will be wasted by politicians hankering
after popularity, and after jobs for themselves and their followers
and dependents. The greatest wasters in the poorest districts are the
irresponsible Socialist authorities. In palatial town halls
sumptuously furnished, in magnificent public libraries, in marble
baths, and other outlets of civic magnificence, money wrung from the
hard-worked wage-earners is wasted in far greater sums than could
possibly be spent by the most reckless capitalist on his private
amusement. The most magnificent town halls, &c., are to be found in
the poorest districts. Besides, "salaries must be liberal enough to
attract the best men to the public service."[689] It is a matter of
course that the rule of irresponsible Socialist agitators, that a
system of local government whereby those who have no money are enabled
to spend lavishly by drawing upon those who have money, will not make
for efficiency and economy, and the end will be the Poplar-ising of
Great Britain. There is a generally accepted principle, "No taxation
without representation." That principle requires as a supplement, "No
representation without taxation." Otherwise Great Britain will be
ruled by a mob headed by imaginative and dishonest demagogues.

No enterprise is too large or too costly for the Socialists. Quite
recently the Fabians recommended in a leaflet that Glasgow should
acquire the whole built-over ground of the city at a cost of
_24,000,000l._, issuing against that sum Corporation Bonds bearing
3-1/4 per cent. interest. Provided that everything should be settled
according to