Granted that
all Mr. Poole's employees are bound to follow for ever the cloven pennon
of the Perfect Pair of Trousers, it is all the more true that the pennon
may, in point of fact, become imperfect. Granted that all Barney Barnato's
workers ought to have followed him to death or glory, it is still a
Perfectly legitimate question to ask which he was likely to lead them to.
Granted that Dr. Sawyer's boy ought to die for his master's medicines, we
may still hold an inquest to find out if he died of them. While we
forbid the soldier to shoot the general, we may still wish the general
were shot.
The fundamental fact of our time is the failure of the successful man.
Somehow we have so arranged the rules of the game that the winners are
worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize.
The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are
accidents--or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is a
generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A revolutionist
would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next to nothing about
coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners know next to
nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend the nature of
their own monopoly with any consistent and courageous policy, however
wicked, as did the old aristocrats with the monopoly of land.
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