effort of wage-earners, but this was only possible because wage-earners were paid to do so, under direction supplied by capitalists, by capitalists who thereby, instead of spending their incomes on immediate enjoyment, invested part of it, always with more or less risk, in furnishing industry with equipment for an everexpanding output, so creating surplus value not only for themselves, but for the whole nation, and for the whole economically civilized world.
By making this investment and taking this risk, and applying labour under expert direction to the task of providing industry with plant in the widest sense of the word, Capitalism has made an enormous increase in population possible, and has put control over the forces of Nature into the hands of active enterprising venturers who certainly might have made better use of it, but have this excuse, that they were bound, in their search for profit, to work to meet the demand of the average consumer, whose quaint foibles in the matter of demand have resulted in the production of a great deal of ugliness and rubbish. But in spite of all that the fastidious may urge, on artistic, moral and common-sense grounds, against the use that has been made under
