SECTION CCI.

HARMONY OF THE THREE BRANCHES OF INCOME.--INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCE IN THEM.

As national-economical civilization advances, the personal difference of the three branches of income is wont to become more and more sharply defined.[201-1] The struggle between landowners, farmers and workmen, which Ricardo necessarily assumed, did not exist at all in the middle ages; since landowners and farmers were then usually one and the same person, and since workmen, either as slaves or peasants, were protected against competition properly so called. And so in the industry of that time, based on the trades or on domestic industry.[201-2] [201-3]

When, later, the division of labor increases, all the differences of men's aptitudes are turned to more advantage, and are more fully developed. In the same proportion that a working class is developed, the members of which are nothing but workmen, and can scarcely hope to possess capital or land,[201-4] there grows up, side by side with it, a class of mere capitalists, who come to obtain an ever-increasing importance.

Considered from a purely economic point of view, this transition has its great advantages. How much must the existence of a special class of capitalists facilitate the concentration of capital and the consequent promotion of production, as well as its (capital's) price-leveling influx and outflow! Even "idle" capitalists have this of good, that, without them, no competent man, destitute of means could engage in any independent enterprise. When, indeed, the gulf between these two classes passes certain bounds, it may, politically and socially, become a great evil. (§ 63.)[201-5]