But more closely regarded, it is seen to be no such thing.

Your contemporaries, with their mutual throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at.

The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community.

If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental.

It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard by practices injurious to the general welfare.