Had labour been thus misdirected by any
private capitalist, his misdirection of it would have soon been checked
by his loss of the means of continuing it; but the County Council, with
the purse of the community at its back, was able, by taxing the
industrial successes of others, to refinance and prolong its own
industrial failure.
Socialists wholly overlook the importance of these considerations. Many
of them, for example, in the case of the London County Council's
steamboats, defended that enterprise in spite of its financial failure,
on the ground that the steamboats were a convenience to certain
travellers at all events, who in all probability were persons of modest
means, while the loss would be made good out of the pockets of the
ratepayers who were presumably rich. But even if this argument were
plausible as applied to a state of society in which the incomes of some
men were greater than those of others, it would be absolutely
inapplicable to conditions such as those desired by socialists, under
which the incomes of all would be fractions, approximately equal, of a
common stock to the production of which all contributed.
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