Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/23

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to a great output of goods and services and by sharpening its faculties, not only for exercise in this purely material use, but also for solving the bigger problems of life and human intercourse that lie behind it.

In fact, however, this system of Capitalism is at present perhaps more widely criticized and abused than any other human institution. And with some reason, for many of its results have been bad, and there is room for great improvement which criticism can help. But criticism that is bad-tempered and unreasonable will do more harm than good. The people who are working on this great business of producing, distributing and consuming the world's wealth are, in the mass, ordinary human beings, with the good and bad qualities of ordinary folk. The ordinary man and woman is an honest, good-natured person who, though not too eager to work very hard, does not want to rob anybody else. If this were not so, society could not exist, and progress would have been impossible. If it be true—as some advocates of Socialism maintain—that Capitalists live by robbing workers of goods which they have produced, it is also true that the average Capitalist does not know that he is doing any such thing, and that if once this crime can be