Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/82

 Manhattan Island. In other words, they have grown rich because there was a community which wanted to enjoy and make use of a certain article of which they were possessed. But is not this also true in a greater or less degree of all of us who receive payments from our fellows in respect of work that we do, or property that we own? Owners of railways would certainly have built them in vain if there had not been a community to travel on them and to send goods over them. The barrister with a huge practice would not be able to earn his £20,000 a year if there were not a crowd of litigants with money to spend on the expensive luxury of justice. The journalist can only earn money from his pen if society has provided him with readers sufficiently educated to enjoy his views on current events. Even Mr. Charlie Chaplin would smile in vain on a desert island. The wage-earner only gets his wages because there are employers who set him to work and consumers to absorb the product which his labour helps to produce.

Any of us who criticizes any one else for the enjoyment of socially created wealth may easily cure himself of the vice of envy by wondering how much of the good things of the earth he could have himself enjoyed if he had been put