The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1921. DEMOCRACY AND CAPITAL.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 631, 10 May 1921, Page 4

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons.

TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1921. DEMOCRACY AND CAPITAL.

It is a bold man, who, in the present state of feeling', sets out to disturb the belief so dear to the agitator that “the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. ’ Yet Mr Barnard Faraday, L.L.8., who is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, essays this task by the simple method of quoting figures. In the same, way he shows that the temporary stress caused by abnormal conditions has not as yet been really felt by the wage earners, and that most of it has fallen upon the middle classes. In his book, “Democracy and Capital,” Mr Faraday also examines the Socialist claim for an equal distribution of all wealth. The author disregards for a time all considerations of the justice of this rough and ready method, while he examines its efficacy. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, he points out. is paid £SOOO a year, and, for purposes of argument, he takes that amount as representing the maximum which should be paid to anyone for value of services. If all incomes in excess of that amount were confiscated there would be a fund of £94,000,000. which would give every one in the Kingdom Is per week more. “The whole scheme of society would be turned upside down, risks innumerable ran, business bankrupted, and unemployment caused, in order to give each of us the value of an ounce of tobacco a week/’ The point is not left there, and the author argues that the disturbance of trasimests would reduce the national Income, and there would not be even a shilling dividend. Discussing the aggregation of capital, Mr Faraday remarks that it is sometimes assumed that concentration of capital, so necessary for the great results of modern Industry, has resulted in reducing the numbers of the owners of that capital. “Nothing,” he says, “could be further front the truth." The join! stock system is the resid*- the

necessity which compels a concentration of capital in a form which assists its ready distribution. Capital so easily divisible as joint stock has a tendency to be subdivided into small portions, and thus there is created a wider distribution of ownership. The whole tendency of modern civilisation, and particularly the modern view of the family, is against the concentration of capital in fewer hands. “No doubt/-' says Mr Faraday, “the old danger of an overpowering State riding roughshod over its citizens is concealed to-day in fine sounding phrases and pseudo economics, but it does not matter much to the man who is robbed whether he is robbed by a Grand Vizief of a bureaucracy. The injury in each case is identical.” In dealing with the immediate manifestations of discontent, Mr Faraday says that it is hopeless to argue that the results of the extremists’ policy will be increased expenditure, increased poverty, and increased suffering. “They know it, and glory in it.” Any successful attempt at amelioration they hail as a disaster to their cause. They have coined the ugly word “Meliorism” to express the ugly idea behind it. There is a word of warning also to those fair-weather politicians who seek to arrest socialism by placating socialists. “If the State trades in batter, it must also trade in milk; if it trades in milk, it must trade in cattle.” All this, he says, acts as a stimulus to the confident faith of the Socialists that “socialism is inevitable.” After each dose, the dose must be made more intense. It is the role of the theoretical reformer always to talk and never to do. He builds up hopes which he cannot fulfil. Their “priggish” and wearisome reiteration of formulae, their arts and crafts, altruism, and didactic superiority are the malaise preceding the disease.”

“We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.”