Note 96 — Chapter XXV · EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM—HISTORIC. AMERICA.

“The more essential and important consideration is this—that whenever the few rapidly accumulate excessive wealth, the many must, necessarily, become comparatively poorer.... In every case in which we have traced out the efficient causes of the present depression we have found it to originate in customs, laws, or modes of action which are ethically unsound, if not positively immoral. Wars and excessive war armaments, loans to despots or for war purposes, the accumulation of vast wealth by individuals, excessive speculation, adulteration of manufactured goods, and, lastly, our bad land system, with its insecurity of tenure, excessive rents, confiscation of tenants’ property, its common enclosures, evictions, and depopulation of the rural districts—all come under this category.”—“Bad Times,” pp. 65, 117. By Alfred Russel Wallace, LL.D. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885.