bounder spending money in vulgar ostentation. All who earn or own wealth have to remember how much of it they owe to the existence of a busy and prosperous community as part of their raw material, and how little they could have done apart from that environment, and consequently how much of it has been earned for them by the community which has given them their chance. By bad spending they ask industry to produce bad stuff. By good spend ing on worthy public objects they might transform the appearance of most of the ugly and depressing towns in England, and give us an educational system that could really afford to grant every citizen that is born to us a chance of growing up into a good and healthy man or woman, fully developed in mind and body. Here perhaps we are demanding too great and rapid a change of outlook. But it is surely not too much to hope that the capitalist may learn that, when he wastes money on luxury, he not only exasperates public opinion, but raises the price of necessaries, and so emphasizes the inequalities which are so dangerous to the social stability on which his existence depends.[1]
- ↑ This platitude I have worked out in detail in a book called Poverty and Waste.—H. W.
