The rich were
falsely accused of social wrong-doing; they were by no means responsible
for poverty. Indeed, they were the only reasonable people; they alone, by
limiting their families, acted as good citizens should act. And he became
quite triumphant, repeating that he knew of no cause for self-reproach,
and that his ever-growing fortune left him with an easy conscience. It
was so much the worse for the poor, if they were bent on remaining poor.
In vain did the doctor urge that the Malthusian theories were shattered,
that the calculations had been based on a possible, not a real, increase
of population; in vain too did he prove that the present-day economic
crisis, the evil distribution of wealth under the capitalist system, was
the one hateful cause of poverty, and that whenever labor should be
justly apportioned among one and all the fruitful earth would easily
provide sustenance for happy men ten times more numerous than they are
now. The other refused to listen to anything, took refuge in his egotism,
declared that all those matters were no concern of his, that he felt no
remorse at being rich, and that those who wished to become rich had, in
the main, simply to do as he had done.
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