And if any one still thinks that, by such a course of conduct,
if ever it became general, as it would do under these conditions, the
owners of capital would be injuring themselves alone, he need only
reflect a little longer on one of our suggested illustrations, and ask
himself whether the gradual deterioration of railroads would have no
effect on the world beyond that of impoverishing the shareholders. It
would obviously affect the many as much as it affected the few, and the
kind of catastrophe that would result from the deterioration of
railroads is typical of that which would result from the deterioration
of capital generally.
It would, then, be a sufficient answer to those who attack interest, and
propose to transfer it from its present recipients to the state, to
elucidate, as has here been done, the two following points: firstly,
that to interest as a means of enjoying wealth--the right to such
enjoyment itself not being here disputed--the only alternative is a
system which would thus prove fatal to everybody; and, further, that,
conversely, the enjoyment of wealth through interest not only possesses
this negative advantage, but is actively implicated in, and is the
natural corollary of, that progressive accumulation of force in the form
of productive machinery to which all the augmented wealth of the modern
world is due.
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