Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/66

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economic freedom is almost impossible. Except in climates where food is provided by nature and clothes and shelter are unnecessary, a man must work to live. A great deal of bitterness between one class and another has been caused by the frequent use of the phrase "wage slaves," as describing the position of the manual workers who work for weekly wages. The wage slave in fact works side by side with the salaried slave, who depends upon his employers, and finally upon the public, for earning his salary, the professional slave, who depends on his patients or his pupils or his clients for his fees, and the interest slave, who depends on those who make use of the capital which he advances to industry for the earning of the interest on which he lives, and with the profit slave, who depends more precariously than any of them on the success of the project which he has financed, in earning from the public a price which will satisfy all the charges which have been put into producing it, and leave something over for him who takes the balance.

Among these various classes of "slaves," the least risk is taken by the capitalist pure and simple—that is to say, by the investor who confines himself in his choice of invest