The maxim, or injunction, to which a study of capital leads us is, Get
capital. In a community where the standard of living is high, and the
conditions of production are favorable, there is a wide margin within
which an individual may practise self-denial and win capital without
suffering, if he has not the charge of a family. That it requires
energy, courage, perseverance, and prudence is not to be denied. Any
one who believes that any good thing on this earth can be got without
those virtues may believe in the philosopher's stone or the fountain of
youth. If there were any Utopia its inhabitants would certainly be very
insipid and characterless.

Those who have neither capital nor land unquestionably have a closer
class interest than landlords or capitalists. If one of those who are
in either of the latter classes is a spendthrift he loses his
advantage. If the non-capitalists increase their numbers, they
surrender themselves into the hands of the landlords and capitalists.
They compete with each other for food until they run up the rent of
land, and they compete with each other for wages until they give the
capitalist a great amount of productive energy for a given amount of
capital. If some of them are economical and prudent in the midst of a
class which saves nothing and marries early, the few prudent suffer for
the folly of the rest, since they can only get current rates of wages;
and if these are low the margin out of which to make savings by special
personal effort is narrow. No instance has yet been seen of a society
composed of a class of great capitalists and a class of laborers who
had fallen into a caste of permanent drudges. Probably no such thing is
possible so long as landlords especially remain as a third class, and
so long as society continues to develop strong classes of merchants,
financiers, professional men, and other classes. If it were conceivable