Page:Social Justice without Socialism.djvu/22

 In a general way I should include public monopoly as well as private among the things which would put a damper on the progress of improvement and lessen the income on which the comfort of laborers in the near future will be dependent. Monopoly of any sort is hostile to improvement, and in this chiefly lies the menace which it holds for mankind.

It is a fairly safe prediction that, if a public monopoly were to exist in every part of the industrial field, the per capita income would grow less, and that it would be only a question of time, and a short time at that, when the laborers would be worse off than they are now. Though, at the outset, they might absorb the entire incomes of the well-to-do