Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/258

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Socialism. We should not all have to be suddenly fired by zeal to work for others with no consideration for ourselves. Capitalists would still be working, as they have to now, to earn profit for themselves by providing the needs of the community. They would only have to recognize, as the best of them do already, that to earn larger profits for the moment by paying their workers less than they can afford to pay is bad policy in the long run; bad for themselves, and bad for the community on whose prosperity and stability they depend. If they would only reflect that if they earn the hostility of consumers by attempts at monopoly, and of the wage-earners by an abuse of the strength that their wealth gives them, they are weaving a rope for their own economic necks, they would be learning a lesson that would be of great benefit to themselves and to everybody else.

Besides their shortsighted attitude to those who work for them, capitalists have done much to undermine their own position in the eyes of detached observers by the use that they have made of the wealth that they have gained. Much of the academic Socialism that is rife among what are called the educated classes is due to the spectacle presented by the rich