Page:Landholding in England.djvu/193

 Again, the influx of money into a country is spoken of as "prosperity," although it is quite possible that the prosperity may be the prosperity of a few, and those few already the most prosperous class. It can mean, that as the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer. The distribution of national wealth is the true test of the "prosperity" of a nation, and not how many hundred millions of money or money's worth constitute the nation's revenue. Fortunes may be becoming m.ore colossal while the bulk of the small people find it harder and harder to live. The terrible cry "Too old at forty" is a modern cry.

Nothing can make up for a too uneven distribution of wealth. This uneven distribution causes pauperism, and not the mere amount of the revenue. It is a terrible fact that the colossal fortunes of modern times make life harder and not easier for the labouring classes. Even the discoveries of science put new weapons into the hands of the inordinately rich. A combination of wealthy men wields a power greater than that of kings in old time. A handful of multi-millionaires can introduce cheap labour, can make wars, and by buying up the press, can command public opinion. In America, the multi-millionaire is almost omnipotent. Universal suffrage does not prevent his acting with a disregard to the public interest which would have been impossible to a feudal baron. If the feudal baron had gone too far with his tenants, he would have found them starting up in little armed bands to resist him. But now it is the multi-millionaire who has the little army—perhaps of Pinkerton's men.

The effect of rating everything at its money value is to make us look upon land as something out of which to make money, and not as something out of which to live—something which produces the actual bread which we eat. We are always talking about whether farming "pays"—whether small holdings "pay." And if we think it can be shown that they do not, we consider the question settled. In the last months of the late government, a deputation of the "Unemployed" waited upon Mr Balfour, to urge him to encourage more labour on the land. Mr Balfour explained to them, that "by the law of production, if you double the number of hands on a farm, the actual productiveness of each man will be diminished, because you have increased the