Show capitalism defined people speak of capitalism as it if it wore some sort of an organized plan imposed upon people unable to help themselves cap capitalism ital larn Is merely a name tor for the system which liar has grown naturally out ol of man kinds ability to produce a surplus of 0 wealth beyond immediate needs capital la Is nothing but wealth not cot required tor for productive use at the moment every mancho man who has a dollar in a savings bank and does not need it Is as much a capitalist as a a millionaire Is capital la Is dest destroyed only when it Is consumed by individuals it Is not lost when it Is invested in permanent things like buildings and railroads the me individuals who invested may lose but the building remains the outcry against capitalism Is not leally icalla aimed at the system which Is the only system under which real wealth ever accumulates but against individuals who divert too high a proportion of their temporary share ol of the worlds capital to n nonsocial non on social uses I 1 SOCIALISM state owned stripped ot of all ot of its sophomoric en tangle ments the essence ot of socialism Is not the abolition ot of capital but tho the ownership ot of all capital by the state the tendency Is that direction has been growing stronger tor for more than a hundred years private capital used to build and operate highways and bridges charging toll tor for every traveller or vehicle that used them long ago those enterprises became investments ot of public capital agriculture fishing mining and manufacturing fac turing are still in the hands bands ot of private capital the complete socialist program would make all ot of those functions ot of the state regulation V U S alm aim what we seem to be heading for in america la Is a compromise between uncontrolled private capitalism and completo complete socialism the compromise Is the continuance ot of private capitalism under state regulation we have had that in the case of raffi railroads roads tor for fifty years it seems to be close at hand in the matter ot of telegraph telephone and radio communications at the same time there Is an increasing tendency to apply state capital to long term enterprises enterprises which do not promise a direct return in dividends but which are presumably justified by their social value this includes such things as parks many classes of highways public buildings and similar enterprises private capital Is not interested in these nonproductive non productive ventures TAXATION it Is distributed 1 t 1 Is merely the surplus arz product 71 of labor a b or above what labor received the question whether that surplus belongs to the employer or to the labor which produced it Is a vexed question that in its turn Is the subject of continuous compromises out ot of each of which labor gets a proportion proportionately tely larger share I 1 since public capital Is exactly like private kofl capital that is ils the surplus of wealth above what Is consumed in the course ot of its production it follows that the larger the share ot of capitol capital ac curing to labor the larger the share of taxation must be borne by labor there Is no such thing as taxing capital out of existence individual capitalists may be taxed into poverty but that Is merely the conversion or of private capital into public capital i tho tha only way capital Is destroyed Is by wasting it private individuals waste it by spending it on unproductive luxuries great estates yachts in other ways that serve no legitimate need but are merely ostentation government wastes it by giving it away in return for little or no productive labor and by letting political grafters drafters gr steal it as it passes through their hands HISTORY IM 1046 ruling the first drat effort to regulate the use of private capital in this country Is set down in tho the proceedings ot of the general court of 0 plymouth colony forthe for the tho yew year 1646 15 john stockbridge who was my earliest american ancestor was waa bi ought brought before the court and charged with being a that ho he owned all the water powers in the colony 11 and had put only one ot of them to use usei with his grist mill he waa was ordered toi bof either cither build nulls mills on the unused water powers or sell them to someone who would he built sawmill on one site altel I 1 and sold zold the other to bis son aon in tn law it has always teemed seemed to me that a I 1 sound principle was established there private capital might justly be required to go to work tor for some social purpose euch buell as building P a sawmill in a perfect social system it would not be permissible for its owner to withhold more of its benefits that than sufficient to maintain himself and his family in reasonable comfort f 0 rt such a rule would be absurd however even en wicked in a political system riddled abed with inefficiency and honeycombed I 1 with graft private capital and its own 1 ors era at the worst are far more honest and tar far more careful of the uses they put their capital to than any akyi government gove yn I 1 know of ament |