While, according to Carnegie, it suited a larger schema that capital accumulate in the hands of a few like Rockefeller and Carnegie, it did not mean that these men had “earned” this money and could therefore do with it what they pleased or hand it over to their progeny. On the contrary, in the larger evolutionary scheme of human history, they had been entrusted with these fortunes as “trustees” because they were best suited to distribute them on behalf of the community at large.
The millionaire businessman who spent his accumulated wealth on himself and his family was guilty twice: of keeping for himself that which did not belong to him and of depriving the larger community of his talents. The same talent that had led him to accumulate millions were the talents needed to distribute those millions. Indiscriminate giving wrecked lives and communities. It took a wise man to give money wisely.
I can conceive of no greater mistake, more disastrous in the end to religion if not to society, than that of trying to make charity do the work of justice.
This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Maecenas. The “good old times” were not good old times.
But the inevitable result of such a mode of manufacture was crude articles at high prices. Today the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceding this would have deemed incredible. The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the farmer had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, then the King could then obtain.
The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factory, in the mine, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer is little better than a myth. All intercourse between them is at an end. Rigid castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it. Under the law of competition, the employers of thousands is forced into the strictest economies, among which the rates paid to labor figure prominently, and often there is friction between the employer and the employed, between capital and labor, between rich and poor. Human society loses homogeneity.
Objections to the foundations upon which the society is based are not in order, because the condition of the race is better with these than it has been with any others which have been tried. One who studies this subject will soon be brought face to face with the conclusion that upon the sacred-ness of property civilization itself depends — the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings-bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions. To those who propose to substitute Communism for this intense Individualism the answer, therefore, is: The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement.
Under republican institutions the division of property among the children is much fairer, but the question which forces itself upon thoughtful men in all land is: Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection?
I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar.
Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life.
But let us assume that Mr. Tilden’s millions finally become the means of giving to New York a noble public library, where the treasures of the world contained in books will be open to all forever, without money and without price.
Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that $950 is unwisely spent; so spent, indeed, as to produce the very evils which it proposes to mitigate or cure.
He only gratified his own feelings, saved himself from annoyance, — and this was probably one of the most selfish and very worst actions of his life, for in all respects he is most worthy.
In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by alms-giving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance.
The parks and pleasure-grounds of small towns throughout Europe are not less surprising than their libraries, museums, and art galleries.
Scarcely a city of any magnitude in the older countries is without many structures and features of great beauty. Much has been spent upon ornament, decoration, and architectural effect: we are still far behind in these things upon this side of the Atlantic.
The highest title which a man can write upon the page of history is his own name.
Lineage is, indeed, most important, but only the lineage of the immediate parents; for in each generation one half of the strain is changed.
No party is so foolish as to nominate for the Presidency a rich man, much less a millionaire. Democracy elects poor men. The man must have worked for his bread to be an available candidate. Nothing more fatal to the prospects of a public man in America than wealth, or the display of wealth.
Poor boys reared thus directly by their parents possess such advantages over those watched and taught by hired strangers, and exposed to the temptations of wealth and position, that it is not surprising they become the leaders in every branch of human action. They appear upon the stage, athletes trained for the contest, with sinews braced, indomitable wills, resolved to do or die.
It is quite true “that expositors can prove anything, and that theologians can explain away anything.”
Let population remain stationary and so do values of property. Let it decline, and values fall even more rapidly. In other words, increased population — the community — creates the wealth in each successive generation. Decrease of population reduces it, and this law holds in the whole fo that vast and greatest field of wealth, Real Estate. In no other field is the making of wealth so greatly dependent upon the community, so little upon the owner, who many wholly neglect it without injury.
We are yet as a nation in the heyday of youth. In time we shall tone down and live simpler lives and create different standards. Wealth will be dethroned as higher tastes prevail, its pursuit become less absorbing and less esteemed, and, above all, the mere man of wealth himself will come to realize that in the estimation of those of wisest judgment he has no place with the educated, professional man. He occupied a distinctly lower plane intellectually, and in the coming day Brain is to stand above Dollars, Conduct above both. The making of money as an aim will then be rated as an ignoble ambition. No man has ever secured recognition, much less fame, from mere wealth. It confers no distinction among the good or the great.
Wealth is the business of the world. That the acquisition of money is the business of the world arises from the fact that, with few unfortunate exceptions, young men are born to poverty, and therefore under the salutary operation of that remarkably wise law which makes for their good: “Thou shalt earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow.”
It is the fashion nowadays to bewail poverty as an evil, to pity the young man who is not born with a silver spoon in his mouth; but I heartily subscribe to the President Garfield’s doctrine, that “The richest heritage a young man can be born to is poverty.”
There is nothing so enervating, nothing so deadly in its effects upon the qualities which lead to the highest achievement, moral or intellectual, as hereditary wealth. And if there be among you a young man who feels that he is not compelled to exert himself in order to earn and live from his own efforts, I tender him my profound sympathy.
It is not the busy man, but the man of idleness, who should arouse our sympathy and cause us sorrow. “Happy is the man who has found his work.”
The cry goes forth often nowadays, “Abolish poverty!” but fortunately this cannot be done; and the poor we are always to have with us. Abolish poverty, and what would become of the race? Progress, development would cease.
The shrine of fame has many worshippers. The element of vanity is seen in its fiercest phase among those who come before the public. It is well known, for instance, that musicians, actors, and even painters are peculiarly prone to excessive personal vanity. Some peculiarities, some one element in his character, may give him prominence or fame, so that his love of art, or of use through art, is entirely drowned by a narrow, selfish, personal vanity. But we find this liability in a lesser degree through the professions, the politician, the lawyer; less, I think, in the physician than in any of the professions, probably because he, more than in any other profession, is called to deal with the sad realities of life face to face. He of all men sees the vanity of vanities.
There is a romantic as well as prosaic side to business. The young man who begins in a financial firm and deals with capital invested in a hundred different ways soon finds romance in business and unlimited room for the imagination.