Читать книгу The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence онлайн

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The dozen, meanwhile, are giants, and they are that because the industrial opportunities of the nation are their property. They are the nation, economically speaking; they own its railroads and telegraphs, its coal mines, oil fields, factories and stores. And they grant to the eighty millions of the nation the right to these opportunities and a chance to earn their living upon one certain definite condition—that of what they produce, they receive only a part, yielding up the balance to be “profits.”

It is also important to notice that these profits are not taken “in kind”—the product must first be sold, so that both wages and profits can be paid in money. It thus follows that the amount of profits is strictly limited by the amount of market that can be found; in other words, that a society whose income is limited, is also limited as to its profit-yielding capacity—that, for instance, a society of eighty millions of people receiving a mere living wage will be able to yield just so much rent, interest and dividends, and not any more.