he would have preferred to put it at the disposal of those who
are in need of capital for industry and promise to pay him 5 per cent.
or L100 a year for the use of it. By so doing he increases the demand
for labour, not momentarily as he would have done if he had spent his
money on goods and services immediately consumed, but for all time, as
long as the railway that he helps to build is running and earning an
income by rendering services. He is a benefactor to humanity as long as
his capital is invested in a really useful enterprise, and especially to
the workers who cannot get work unless the organizers of industry are
supplied with plenty of cheap capital. In fact, the more plentiful and
cheap is capital, the keener will be the demand for the labour of the
workers.

But when Dr. Nearing points out that the income of the ten thousand
dollars would be equally secure if the owner of them had them left him
by his father or given him by his uncle, then at last he smites capital
on a weak point in its armour. There, is, without question, much to be
said for the view that it is unfair that a man who has worked and saved
should thereby be able to hand over to his son or nephew, who has never
worked or saved, this right to an income which is derived from work done
by somebody else. It seems unfair to all of us, who were not blessed
with equally industrious and provident fathers and uncles, and it is
often bad for the man who gets the income as a reward for no effort of
his own, because it gives him a false start in life and sometimes tends
to make him a futile waster, who can only justify his existence and his
command over other people's work, by pointing to the efforts of his
deceased sire or uncle. Further, unless he is very lucky, he is likely
to grow up with the notion that, just because he has been left or given
a certain income, he is somehow a superior person, and that it is part
of the scheme of the universe that others should work for his benefit,
and that any attempt on the part of other people to get a larger share,
at his expense, of the good things of the earth is an attempt at
robbery. He is, by being born to a competence, out of touch with the law
of nature, which says that all living things must work for their living,
or die, and his whole point of view is likely to be warped and narrowed
by his unfortunate good fortune.

These evils that spring from hereditary property are obvious. But it may
be questioned