feel any responsibility for the welfare of their subjects?"

"None whatever."

"And, if I understand," pursued Edith, "this government of the
capitalists was not only without moral sanction of any sort or plea of
benevolent intentions, but was practically an economic failure--that is,
it did not secure the prosperity of the people."

"What I saw in my dream last night," I replied, "and have tried to tell
you this morning, gives but a faint suggestion of the misery of the world
under capitalist rule."

Edith meditated in silence for some moments. Finally she said: "Your
contemporaries were not madmen nor fools; surely there is something you
have not told me; there must be some explanation or at least color of
excuse why the people not only abdicated the power of controling their
most vital and important interests, but turned them over to a class which
did not even pretend any interest in their welfare, and whose government
completely failed to secure it."

"Oh, yes," I said, "there was an explanation, and a very fine-sounding
one. It was in the name of individual liberty, industrial freedom, and
individual initiative that the economic government of the country was
surrendered to the capitalists."

"Do you mean that a form of government which seems to have been the most
irresponsible and despotic possible was defended in the name of liberty?"

"Certainly; the liberty of economic initiative by the individual."