168   HISTORIC GROWTH OF

MAN.

WEALTH AND CAPITAL.   169

unless he combines his labor with that of his fellows. The rights of wealth thus become common and social, as well as personal.

Three objects are gained through combined labors. First, increased power of production ; second, economy and security in the use of wealth; third, facilities for making exchanges of property

Capital is accumulated wealth, that surplus beyond current consumption which may be applied to increase or maintain production. As capital is always the result or product of labor, the two cannot be really in conflict. There can be no real antagonists between the act which produces a thing and the thing itself. But the economic system of civilism has always made a conflict of interests between the persons whose labor pro duced wealth and another class who always sought to appropriate the larger part of that wealth without doing any manual labor themselves.

The conflict was between two classes. It has

eached a higher degree of bitterness in our own day than ever before. And in our own day it will come to a final end. For the masses are studying this problem and they will persist until a remedy is found and applied.

NATURE GIVES WEALTH only as a reward of labor. Wild fruits may tempt the hand of man, but some work must be done even to pick these. In some countries wild grain, wheat, or rice, or maize, may offer itself ready grown for sustenance. But effort, labor, is required to gather and preserve this grain. The savage who finds a nugget of gold cannot use this to supply himself with food, clothing or shelter. In a pastoral state, where men depend upon flocks and

herds, some labor is still necessary. Abraham was rich in sheep and cattle. But he employed three hundred and eighteen servants to help in this shepherd work. He could sell sheep for Egyptian gold and get the well housed goldsmiths of old Egypt to make the ring and bracelets for Isaac's wedding pledge to Rebecca.

Brain work counts along with muscle work as productive power, all the way from the cunning of the savage hunter to the skill of the highest civilized artisan. But the brain work which helps in production, which invents, directs or discovers, this work is one kind of a thing. And that brain work which contrives to get away with the larger share of the product after the labor is done, that brain work requires quite a different set of mental faculties. It calls into its constant service secrecy, aggression, fraud, fear and other abnormal phases of the lower faculties The great merchant princes, railway kings, bankers and brokers of our day depend upon constant misrepresentation, tricks and deception for their success in dealing with the public and even with each other. They could not buy and sell to advantage, manipulate stocks, " bull and bear" the markets, or even build the railways, without constantly making the people believe things which they themselves know to be untrue. They call this "business tact," and when a whole nation deceives another it is diplomacy. Men who think themselves perfectly honorable, who would scorn to lie in other relations of life, do not hesitate to use these selfish deceptions in their daily business affairs. They feel that they must do as the rest do or they cannot succeed and would quickly be pushed to the wall.