Capital in the same way will be divided into opposite camps. Invested capital—that is, capital sunk in enterprises which society will recognise as belonging to the old order—will take the alarm and fall in value enormously, while, on the other hand, capital seeking investment will welcome an outlet which has long been its sorest need. Invested capital will in its opposition be further weakened by another consideration. Holders of existing forms of capital will strive—even though it be at a great sacrifice—to sell part of their old time-honoured stocks, and invest them in new enterprises, on municipally-owned land, for they will not wish to "have all their eggs in one basket"; and thus will the opposing influences of vested property neutralise each other.
But vested-property interests will be, as I believe, affected yet more remarkably in another way. The man of wealth, when he is personally attacked and denounced as an enemy of society, is slow to believe in the perfect good faith of those who denounce him, and, when efforts are made to tax him out by the forcible hand of the State, he is apt to use every endeavour, lawful or unlawful, to oppose such efforts—and often with no small measure of success. But the average wealthy man is no more an unmixed compound of selfishness than the average poor man; and if he sees his houses or lands depreciated in value, not by force, but because those who lived in or upon them have learned how to erect far better homes of their own, and on land held on conditions more advantageous to them, and to surround their children with many advantages which cannot be enjoyed on his estate, he will philosophically bow to the inevitable, and, in his better moments, even welcome a change 10
