interest to cover its risks, its income is still excessive and is exploitation.
If we consider some of the recently formed trusts we again discover incomes which cannot be justified on grounds of public interest. The capital of £34,000,000 which the Mercantile Marine Company carries is generally held to be too great. If interest were paid on it, the community would have to bear excessive freight rates; if interest is not paid on it somebody's money has been transferred into somebody else's pocket. The lending of such capital is not an assistance to but a hampering of enterprise. It is as much a waste of capital as was the old hoarding of money in a stocking, and it is far more detrimental to industry. Another source of capitalist incomes has been the forcing and keeping up of prices above economic levels. Thus the price of sugar in America has been kept up by the trust in spite of great improvements that ought to have reduced prices. The same is true of oil, and the whole world is groaning under the Meat Trust. The policy of Protection greatly enhances these incomes. They are all of the nature of exploitation.
Similarly a substantial proportion of incomes made on Stock Exchange transactions has no justification. The Stock Exchange itself is a necessary institution and will continue to be so for a very long time to come. It is an organisation for the exchange of capital, a market for investments. But instead of being one of the organs of the
