It is precisely this course of conduct, the end of which would be general ruin, that any attack on interest, by means of special taxation or otherwise, would, so long as it lasted, stimulate and render inevitable.

Let me point out--though it ought in a general way to be self-evident--precisely how this is.
We start with assuming--for, as we have seen already, so much is conceded by those who attack interest to-day--that the owners of capital, however their rights may be restricted, still have rights to it of some kind.

But a man's rights to his capital will not be rights at all unless they empower him to use it in one way or another as a means of ministering to his own personal desires; and it is possible for him so to use it in one or other of two ways only--either by keeping it in the form of some productive machine or plant, and living on a part of the values which this produces, or by trenching on the substance of the machine or the plant itself in the manner, and with the results, which have just been explained and analysed.

If, therefore, capitalists are to be virtually deprived of their interest, either by means of a special tax on "unearned incomes" or otherwise, but are yet permitted to enjoy their capital somehow, no course is open to them but to employ for their private pleasures the men by whom this capital, in such forms as machines or railroads, is at present maintained, renewed, and kept from lapsing into a state in which it would be unable to do or to produce anything.

And if any one still thinks that, by such a course of conduct, if ever it became general, as it would do under these conditions, the owners of capital would be injuring themselves alone, he need only reflect a little longer on one of our suggested illustrations, and ask himself whether the gradual deterioration of railroads would have no effect on the world beyond that of impoverishing the shareholders.