Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/246

 Capitalism of the new powers which the Industrial Revolution has given to man, there is plenty to be said on the other side of the account. We have done things worth doing under Capitalism. Sir Leo Chiozza Money in an article in the Observer of November 23, 1919, told us that: "With coal we create an export surplus of manufactures; with that export surplus we purchase food and materials to feed our population and our factories, and thus obtain the means to create a further export surplus to import more food and materials. This process, continued during a period of five generations, changed the poor and backward agricultural Britain of 1750 into the comparatively wealthy State which found, at the opening of the nineteenth century, the means to fight Napoleon, and, a century later, the means to destroy German militarism."

It is only fair to Sir Leo to observe that he, being a convinced and earnest Socialist, doubtless believes that economic progress would have been much greater and better under some form of Collectivist management than it has been under Capitalism. And he may be right. But, as Aristotle says, "the fact is the starting line," and the fact is that these things were done under Capitalism, and that under it, as