Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/68

 64 industrial system, it is manipulated and controlled by financiers who influence prices and exchanges to suit their own interests. The manipulation of capital exchange has become a business which is parasitic upon industry although the institution through which the operations are carried on is necessary for industry. The rubber boom which took place in 1910 is a typical example of those activities. It resulted in no fewer than three injuries to trade. An important industry was unsettled by feverish speculation; it was burdened with unnecessary capital; the price of its products was forced up. Thus the incomes derived from these transactions more nearly represented a measure of industrial loss than of industrial service and gain.

These are but examples, and they by no means exhaust the catalogue of anti-social sources of interest and successful business transactions which represent waste and exploitation. Such a catalogue would specify hundreds of ways of making an income, from dealing in slum leases to trading on bankruptcy stock, from shipping rings to sweating wages.

In addition to the specific instances of anti-social sources of income which I have given, I must comment on the general wasteful effect of the system as a whole. One of the chief characteristics of competitive com-