Prefatory Note

IN January, 1909, Mr. Keir Hardie delivered an address in which he pointed out that the remarkable increase in our national income, of which so much was being said in the controversy then raging between Free Traders and Tariff Reformers, had not been shared by the working classes, who were no better off than before. Immediately Mr. W. H. Mallock wrote to The Times accusing Mr. Keir Hardie of ignorance of political economy, on the ground that an educated man would have known that as the increase had been produced by the exceptional ability of the employers and inventors, there was no reason to claim any share of it for the employee class. Thereupon I lost patience with Mr. Mallock and wrote the following letter to The Times.