Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/48

 applied to natural objects. What is it produces surplus value, and thus provides profit, interest, rent, commissions, &c.—labour applied to natural objects under the control of the capitalist class who take all the value produced less the mere average subsistence wages of the labourer. Yet to provide more wealth we are to cut off the supply of labour by breeding no labourers. This foolish Malthusian craze is itself bred of our anarchical competitive system; and those who are smitten with it cannot see that the power of man over nature is such that, if his labour were properly organised, he would produce in food or its equivalent at least four times more than the amount of wealth which he would require, if he lived in absolute comfort, provided he worked only six hours a day. Were machinery properly applied, far less than two hours labour a day for each male above twenty-one would suffice for all to live in comfort, if none lived in excessive luxury on the labour of others. As it is, about one-fourth of our adult population are engaged in actual useful production, often with inferior machinery, yet the total income is £1,300,000,000 a year.

That the power of man over nature increases in a far more rapid ratio in all progressive societies than the increase of population; that the well-to-do—such as all would be in an organised Socialist community—breed, slowly, the poor fast; that the supposed law of diminishing returns to capital (which means in one shape and another labour) expended on the soil is demonstrably false; that England alone could profitably produce food enough to feed its present population, the return increasing with each improvement in agriculture; that