Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/131

 Rh time of trade depression and unemployment. If it were true that men will work only to own property there is not the inducement for a single week's hard manual labour in modern society. The significance of working-class savings is constantly exaggerated. Only in the very rarest of instances do they give extra enjoyment or mean a higher standard of life; in nearly every case they simply lie in reserve lest a misfortune should come, and they are not sufficient to remove or to modify the one economic motive which makes the working classes toil, namely, the fear of speedy hardship if they cease to toil. They are useful in the day of trouble; they are not large enough to be of appreciable value in the day of steady work. If men could be insured against unemployment and sickness, the workman's savings would cease to have any influence upon his life.

Only a few, a very small class, enjoy to-day the pleasure and the freedom which comes from private property, and a great part of that class has ceased to give active service to society. They loan money rather than use it; they abstract rents rather than make profits. Though it may have been true some time ago that the stream constantly flowing from the status of workman to that of employer, gladdened the heart of the workman and held out prospects to him that one day he might embark on its waters, that stream is very narrow and very shallow now, and, in comparison with the multitudes who never start upon it or who sink in its upper reaches,