And now, before we return to this particular question, we will go on to deal with another which to a certain extent overlaps it, but is narrower in its compass, and seems, for that very reason, to many minds of greater practical moment.  I mean the question of interest, or the income which comes to its recipients without any necessary effort on their own part to correspond to it.

FOOTNOTES: 

[18] I met an interesting embodiment of this mood of mind in America, in the person of a slim young man, well-dressed, well-educated, refined in his speech and manners, who worked as a clerk or accountant in some large financial house.  To my great astonishment he introduced himself to me as a socialist.  “I don’t believe like Marx,” he said, “that labour produces everything, but I maintain that the task-work of the employed and directed labourer, of whatever grade—­whether he uses a pen or a chisel—­is always worth more than the wages which the employers pay him for performing it.  I feel this myself with regard to my own firm.  Month by month I am worth to it more than the sums it gives me.  This,” he went on, with an odd gleam in his eyes, “is what I may not endure to think of—­that others should be always appropriating values which I have produced myself; and nine out of ten of the men who become socialists, do so because they feel as I do about this particular point.”

[19] General Walker also seeks to assimilate the product of ability to rent; and my criticism of Mr. Webb in this respect applies to him also.  General Walker’s book was mentioned frequently in connection with my late addresses in America; and it was said by one or two critics that I had borrowed from, and ought to have acknowledged my debt to, him.  As a matter of fact, I never saw his book till after my return to England, when I read it with interest and admiration.  His doctrines with regard to the entrepreneur is, so far as it goes, fundamentally identical with the main argument of this volume.  My criticism of him would be that he does not give to this particular part of his doctrine the foremost place which logically belongs to it; and that though attributing to the entrepreneur some special productive faculty distinct from labour, he starts his work with re-enumerating the old doctrine that labour, capital, and law are the only factors in production.

[20] For example, the silk factory at Derby, erected by Lombe, in the reign of George II., the machinery of which comprised 26,000 wheels.

[21] These figures represent less than the truth.  They are merely given in order to indicate the general character of the situation to-day, as compared with that of an earlier, but still comparatively recent period.  To go into details minutely would involve extensive and here needless discussion.