It seems therefore that we must begin by holding the right to an income
as sacred and equal, just as we now begin by holding the right to life
as sacred and equal. Indeed the one right is only a restatement of the
other. To hang me for cutting a dock laborer's throat after making much
of me for leaving him to starve when I do not happen to have a ship
for him to unload is idiotic; for as he does far less mischief with his
throat cut than when he is starving, a rational society would esteem
the cutthroat more highly than the capitalist. The thing has become
so obvious, and the evil so unendurable, that if our attempt at
civilization is not to perish like all the previous ones, we shall have
to organize our society in such a way as to be able to say to every
person in the land, "Take no thought, saying What shall we eat? or What
shall we drink? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" We shall then no
longer have a race of men whose hearts are in their pockets and safes
and at their bankers. As Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also. That was why he recommended that money should
cease to be a treasure, and that we should take steps to make ourselves
utterly reckless of it, setting our minds free for higher uses. In other
words, that we should all be gentlemen and take care of our country
because our country takes care of us, instead of the commercialized cads
we are, doing everything and anything for money, and selling our souls
and bodies by the pound and the inch after wasting half the day haggling
over the price. Decidedly, whether you think Jesus was God or not, you
must admit that he was a first-rate political economist.