Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/151

 When we realise that this inherited wealth means, in plain terms, the right to have a hundred or a thousand fellow-men working for us or our descendants in perpetuity, for no merit or service on our part, and when we consider the folly and waste which so commonly follow large inherited fortunes, we must regard this tradition as evil and indefensible. One wonders how long the working community is going to sustain this burden, and how long refined men and women will imagine that they have a right to live like Oriental potentates because they had a shrewd or a gifted ancestor.

It is sometimes said in their favour that they employ labour with their wealth. I have heard bishops give them this foolish consolation. As if the wealth would cease to exist, and to employ labour, if it were in the pockets of a thousand men, instead of the pockets of one Duke of Norfolk or Duke of Westminster! The only difference would be that this wealth, instead of paying a thousand servants and trades-people to work for the comfort of one family, would pay a thousand men, who would lose nothing by the change of employment, to produce comfort for a thousand families. Meantime, the Duke is embarrassed by his wealth, or spends it on superfluous things, and the thousand families live in vicious misery. Their babies die for lack of good milk in the hot summer, and the rich youth or maiden—I have known this done—carelessly takes a bath of milk. Let us understand