render suit the views of the consuming public. It is therefore rather startling to find a considerable school of thought which appears to regard the capitalist as a thief, and the capitalist system as one of organized robbery.
In a book in favour of National Guilds called Self-Government in Industry, on page 235, Mr. G. D. H. Cole remarks: "To do good work for a capitalist employer is merely, if we view the situation rationally, to help a thief to steal more successfully." Other Guild champions are equally explicit. Messrs. Reckitt and Bechhofer in The Meaning of National Guilds allude to the "felony of Capitalism" as if it were a self-evident truism.
Mr. Cole is no street-corner spouter, but a cultured and highly-educated writer, and some time a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. When such a man calmly assumes without attempting to argue the point that the capitalist is a thief, it is inevitable that many honest people who live on the interest of capital, without dreaming that they are doing anything wicked or dishonest, should feel themselves pulled up short by the question—Are we really thieves and parasites living on the labour of society without any right to the enjoyment of goods which we are consuming, and, if so,
