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THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
produce impoverishment for every creative factor in national prosperity.[1]
5. The Small Capitalist.
In this way the trust grows and another stage begins. Capital is carnivorous and preys upon itself. Competition is self-destructive.[2] A point is reached in the concentration of capital when war between
- ↑ This was never put with more honest and callous candour than by the President of the American Sugar Trust, Mr. H. O. Havemeyer, when examined before the American Industrial Commission. "The policy of the American Sugar Refining Company," he said, "is to protect its trade, and if it resulted in crushing a competitor it is no concern of the American Company; if he gets in the press, that is his affair, not ours." Then he was asked: "And if any one interferes with the business, profits, or competition of the American Sugar Refining Company, it is its policy to prevent it if possible?" He answered: "By lowering profits to defy it." "And if it results in crushing him out?" "That is his affair."
- ↑ Perhaps the most conclusive proof of this argument has been supplied by Mr. Mallock in a book written with the intention of disproving it. In The Nation as a Business Firm, Mr. Mallock analyses national income for the purpose of showing that it is better distributed than it was, and that those who have told us that it is very inequitably distributed are wrong. He deals with family incomes only. This in itself is open to grave objection from the scientific point of view, and he further stretches figures and arguments in order to make his families as affluent as he possibly can. But what are his conclusions? They are that 855,000 rich people take £400,000,000 per annum, that 12,150,000 comfortable people take £571,000,000, and that 29,895,000 wage-earners take £773,000,000 per annum. This apology for the existing order sounds little better than a confession of the truth of all the condemnations that have been uttered against it.
