“This little incident illustrates the whole matter.  It is not Intellect that rules the world of wealth, it is Cunning. Muscle once dominated mankind—­the muscle of the baron’s right arm; and Intellect had to fly to the priesthood, the monastery, the friar’s gown, for safety.  Now Muscle is the world’s slave, and Cunning is the baron—­the world’s master.

“Let me give you another illustration:  Ten thousand men are working at a trade.  One of them conceives the scheme of an invention, whereby their productive power is increased tenfold.  Each of them, we will say, had been producing, by his toil, property worth four dollars and a half per day, and his wages were, we will say, one dollar and a half per day.  Now, he is able with the new invention to produce property worth forty-five dollars per day.  Are his wages increased in due proportion, to fifteen dollars per day, or even to five dollars per day?  Not at all. Cunning has stepped in and examined the poor workman’s invention; it has bought it from him for a pittance; it secures a patent—­a monopoly under the shelter of unwise laws.  The workmen still get their $1.50 per day, and Cunning pockets the remainder.  But this is not all:  If one man can now do the work of ten, then there are nine men thrown out of employment.  But the nine men must live; they want the one man’s place; they are hungry; they will work for less; and down go wages, until they reach the lowest limit at which the workmen can possibly live.  Society has produced one millionaire and thousands of paupers.  The millionaire cannot eat any more or wear any more than one prosperous yeoman, and therefore is of no more value to trade and commerce; but the thousands of paupers have to be supported by the tax-payers, and they have no money to spend, and they cannot buy the goods of the merchants, or the manufacturers, and all business languishes.  In short, the most utterly useless, destructive and damnable crop a country can grow is—­millionaires.  If a community were to send. to India and import a lot of man-eating tigers, and turn them loose on the streets, to prey on men, women and children, they would not inflict a tithe of the misery that is caused by a like number of millionaires.  And there would be this further disadvantage:  the inhabitants of the city could turn out and kill the tigers, but the human destroyers are protected by the benevolent laws of the very people they are immolating on the altars of wretchedness and vice.”

“But what is your remedy?” asked Max.

“Government,” I replied; “government—­national, state and municipal—­is the key to the future of the human race.