I suppose that it is inevitable that many readers will have concluded that the preceding chapters must be taken to mean that the distribution of wealth is not susceptible of any appreciable change.  I would remind those readers of an important distinction upon which impatient people have sometimes based a complaint against economists.  The economist, it is said, analyses with great pomp and ceremony the laws governing the distribution of wealth among the agents of production, but says practically nothing about the distribution between individuals and classes, which is the only thing of any real interest to practical people.  Now the economist concentrates on the agents of production for the very good reason that it is only with respect to them that any clear and certain laws as to distribution can be laid down.  Into the distribution between individuals and classes there enter other and variable factors, governed by no fundamental economic law; and here, the conclusion should at once suggest itself, is the field for action designed to alter the distribution of wealth.  What is possible or desirable in this field, it is again not the purpose of this volume to discuss.  It is an obvious, even if not a very helpful conclusion that an increase in the habit of saving among weekly wage-earners might, without appreciably affecting the distribution between Capital and Labor, greatly modify the resulting distribution between social classes.  But questions as to how far it might be possible or justifiable to achieve a similar result by the use of the weapon of taxation, by changes in inheritance laws, or by the public ownership of industry take us into a far more uncertain and controversial sphere.  The difficulties and objections which present themselves are familiar and formidable; but they are of quite a different order from the economic laws which we have been examining.  The laws themselves do not entitle us to make any dogmatic pronouncement upon these large issues of social policy.

But this is not to deprive these laws of practical importance.  They represent essential criteria of sound policy in the sphere of social reorganization no less than in ordinary business.  In our days a curious obsession has led many people to disparage these criteria, as though they were the sordid prejudices of a stupid tradesman.  Because it has been found a matter of obvious practical convenience to maintain the roads out of taxation or of rates, and to dispense with charges for their use, it is suggested that the same principle should be applied to the railways.  Or, more commonly, because it has been found convenient to make the same charge for the carrying of letters between Land’s End and John o’ Groats as between Hampstead and Highgate, it is suggested that this principle should be applied to railway rates and fares.  It may be well, therefore, to point out that the justification of uniform postal charges rests upon the facts:  (1) that the costs