The varnish on the buggy is bought with the rust on the reaper's blades; the smart, weather-proof apron with the barn's unmended roof.

If the managing body of a railroad pays a higher dividend to the shareholders than can be got out of its net earnings, the results are presently seen in cars that are growing dirty, in engines that break down, in rotten sleepers, and in trains that run off the track.

The men who were once fed out of a certain portion of the traffic receipts to keep these things in repair, are now fed to dance for the shareholders, thus supplying them with spurious dividends.

A farm or a railroad which was managed on these principles would ultimately cease to produce or to do anything for anybody; and if all modern capital were managed in a similar way, all the multiplied luxuries distinctive of modern civilisation would, one by one, disappear like crops which were left to rot for lack of machines to reap them with, and train services which had ceased because the engines were all burned out.
That such a climax should ever, in any modern country, complete itself cannot, let me say once more, be apprehended as a practical possibility; but it is practically impossible only because the earlier stages of the approach to it would lead to a situation that was intolerable long before it ceased to be irreparable.

And here we reach the point to which the foregoing examination has been leading us.