9. Abandoning this untenable position, Socialists still ask: "But is
the difference in the value of their labour quite so vast as is the
interval between the profits of the employer and the pay of his poor
drudges?" Honestly we cannot say that it is. We are fain to fall back
upon the consideration, that the employer contributes, not only his
brains to the work, but his capital. "Ah, that is just it," is the
Socialists' quick reply: "We propose to relieve him of his capital,
and remunerate his brainwork only: by that means we shall be able to
pay sufficiently handsome wages for management, according to the ratio
of mental and manual labour, and at the same time have a sufficiently
large surplus over to raise the wages of his needy comrades, those
seventy thousand hodmen and eighty thousand quarrymen."
10. Two reasons may be given for turning away from this seductive
proposal, and leaving capital (not _consumer's wealth_ merely) in
private hands,--and that not only in the hands of what we may call
_mentally productive capitalists_, men who oversee their own
enterprises and manage their own workmen, but even of _unproductive
capitalists_, men who have shares in and reap profits out of a
business which they never meddle with.
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