Chapter IV: Part 4

Of all the melancholy travesties on fun, I think that the sports and games of the wealthy young men and women of our day are the finest parody ever written or acted. Drive through a country district to a fashionable out-of-town club. At half a dozen places on your way you will see groups of boys and girls playing ball, flying kites, paddling, rowing, or doing something else in the natural human way. You will hear shouts, quarrels perhaps, signs of intense and natural rivalry. When you come to your journey’s end you will find other groups of pleasure seekers. Go join the groups of young men and women in beautiful summer costumes playing golf or tennis; or sit on the piazzas over the sea and watch a game of bridge. Listen for the shouts of joy such as you heard down the road, and you will hear the cawing of the crows. Catch the drift of the conversation. In a very great number of cases the subject matter of it is that it would be a lot more fun to do something else at some other time in some other place. The dreary pleasures of the idle rich, yachting, horseracing, golf, tennis, hunting--these are not sports; they are schemes devised to keep us from being bored to death by the mere fact of living.

I met a man down town the other day who told me he had bought a farm in Alberta. For a great many years past I have met him at all sorts of functions in all the big cities of the East, in London, and in Paris. I asked him what in the world he was going to do with a farm. At first he wouldn’t reply, afraid that he might hurt my feelings, but finally he told me.

“I’m sick. There isn’t much the matter with me, but I have simply got to have a change. My nerves have gone all to pieces. Playing bridge gives me the “willies.” I’d sooner pick rags than go to another dance. Golf--the way we play it in the summer--is worse than ping-pong. Late suppers have got on my nerves. The races are a horrible bore. I’d sooner go to Hoboken than Paris. I’ve got to do something or I will die. Last winter in London I made friends with a young fellow twenty-one years old who last month got into disgrace and was banished to Alberta. Last month I heard from him--and that settled me. He swears he has found the antidote. I’m going out to try it.”

He went. I don’t suppose he’ll stay there, because he never stayed in any place in his life for any length of time, and I presume before long he’ll come back and spend a lot of money on manicures and make his hands look as if he had never worked before he plunges again into the same Dead Sea: but, sometimes, I wish I had the nerve to follow him, or to buy his farm from him when he grows tired of it.

If our wealth, and our pleasures, turn at last to nothing and weary us beyond expression, no less in the more sacred things of life--real life, I mean--does this same miserable demon of futility pursue us. As the world has read these past two or three years the low, horrible, depraved story of the marital relationships of scion after scion of one of our wealthiest families, the world has turned with disgust from the paltry record of intrigue, vile lust, dishonour, and shame. That story is but one of many. It is true that in this, the dearest and tenderest of all the relationships of life, we are haunted by futility. Our young men and maidens marry in honour and hope in a world of hope, lighted by the eternal fires of love. Too often, alas! romance becomes tragedy, or comedy, if you look at it that way.

It is the same old story. Everything is far too easy. All the comforts, all the luxuries, all the pleasures for which normal men and women have to work, drop, like over-ripe fruit, into their waiting hands. There is no struggle to hold their minds together. There is no common ambition to fill their hearts and souls with a desire for mutual help. It is all empty, frivolous, and vain. In time it is easy to slip away from the paths of convention into habits of looseness and even of vice. The old-fashioned religion is dead among us, and so one great protector of the home has passed and gone.

I cannot find it in my heart to condemn as strongly as I should the lapses of the idle rich from the paths of virtue; for I know exactly how it is. It is futile. It is empty. It is a restriction of freedom. It is a chain about your neck. You try, at first, to loosen it; at last you determine to break it. Then the patient world is treated to another tale of infidelity, of misery, of little picayune human weakness--a tale to laugh at, or to weep over, according as you will.

I am not going to dwell upon this theme; for it is a beastly thing. I have only mentioned it because it is a logical climax to this chapter on FUTILITY. And I regard futility as the real nemesis of Society. It turns our lives to nothing; it makes of our fairest garden a desert; it robs us, in our very cradles, of our lives, our liberties, and our happiness. It leaves us groping about in a world of shadows, longing for the substance, dreaming of realities we never can know, wishing always for change, sighing always for worlds that are out of our reach. Of all the grim jokes that ever were perpetrated, the grimmest of all, in my estimation, is the time-honoured coupling of the words wealth and happiness in the formal blessing of a new-made bride.

“_If the wealthy classes so often come off second best in a
struggle with the democracy, the cause is generally to be found
in their disinclination to submit to leadership. It has always
been a failing of rich and educated men to have too high an
opinion of their own abilities. The prospect which faced the Roman
Conservatives at this moment (88 B. C.), when the Revolution, in
the person of Marius, had made itself complete master of the State,
was indeed dark enough to close up the party ranks. Yet it was only
by accident that they discovered in Sulla a fit champion for their
cause._”

--FERRERO.

_Chapter Ten_

THE DEATH KNELL OF IDLENESS

As I write, I am, myself oppressed by this nemesis of futility. Half a dozen times while I was writing this book I stopped to reason with myself to the effect that it wouldn’t do any good, that the rich will not read it, and that, even if they do, it cannot pierce through the armour of self-conceit, vanity, and arrogance. Yet I have persevered, in the hope that perhaps some few will read and understand, and, instead of setting me down as an alarmist and an agitator, will at least consider me honest, and perhaps set to work for themselves to find out the truth about these things.

That grim truth is that we as a class are condemned to death. We have outlived our time. It is not necessary, as it was in the earlier ages of the world’s history, that the mass of the people should be enslaved to give leisure to an upper class in the pursuit of luxuries, of refinement, of the factors that go to the making of civilization. Instead of being the roof and crown of things, the wealthy class in America to-day has sunk to the level of the parasite. The time has come when the producing classes are about to bring it to judgment. In fact, to-day we stand indicted before the court of civilization. We are charged openly with being parasites; and the mass of evidence against us is so overwhelming that there is no doubt whatever about the verdict of history, if indeed it must come to a verdict.

Idleness is doomed as a vocation. Of that I am perfectly certain. Even in the social world it is becoming unfashionable. Not so very long ago, in the fashionable world of New York, it was considered bad taste, in fact, it was a decided breach of etiquette, to inquire amongst the men of your acquaintance what anybody did for a living. Within the past five years there has been a very decided change in this respect, and I constantly hear that very question asked, without rebuke, in the most fashionable clubs of the city.

A man whom I know pretty well, himself a member of the highest social order, but a man of indefatigable energy, recently put very neatly this fact that many of the quondam idle class are now engaging themselves in useful pursuits. On the street one day he met a young man, a confirmed idler of long standing. He exchanged the time of day with him, and was told that he was about to go to Europe to join in the social season of London. He congratulated him and said he thought it was a good thing to do.

A few nights later, talking to me about him, he said:

“I feel sorry for Charlie. He seems so lonely. He can’t find any one to play with him!”

In a measure, that is true. The confirmed idler of the social world is slowly coming to be despised instead of envied. He still infests a few of the up-town clubs, but even here he is more and more relegated to the bottom of the social list. It is harder and harder every social year to fill up the ranks for social entertainment. A dinner or an early reception can be managed very well, for the young men who work will go to such functions, perhaps as freely as they ever went. It is far different with the late dance or the late reception.

If you could go down into Wall Street and call the roll of the bond houses, it would astound you to discover how many young men of the highest social class are working very hard right at the bottom of the ladder of industry learning the financial business. A friend of mine, a fairly well-to-do man of a small city in the Middle West, sent his son to me a year or so ago with a letter asking me to introduce him in Wall Street with a view to his learning the bond business. He had chosen that as his vocation in life, and he had taken a special course in college as a preparation for it. I sent him, with personal letters, to half a dozen friends of mine, partners in various houses. I told him simply to look around, at first, and to talk freely and frankly to these gentlemen about the chances for a young man in that line of business.

He came back to me in the course of a week, considerably crestfallen. He had looked forward to earning his living in an honourable way. He found the conditions in this labour market most deplorable from his point of view. According to his story, every one of these big bond houses announced itself able to get all the apprentice labour that it needed at from five dollars to ten dollars a week. His report interested me so much that I went around myself to some of my friends to learn the causes of this strange condition.

In the case of one bond house I discovered that it had one very skilful and very high paid man selling bonds at retail throughout the city. Working under him were three young men learning the bond business. I knew them all, personally, socially. They belonged to one of the best of the younger sets. Two of them went out a good deal, and the third had a reputation as something of a student. One of them I knew to be the happy possessor of four automobiles and a small stable of horses. Both the others owned automobiles, and belonged to some of the most expensive, as well as the best, of the up-town clubs.

One of these young men--and none of them was so very young at that--received the salary of fifteen dollars a week. The other two were getting ten dollars apiece. All three were college men. My friend in this bond house told me that two of them were making good; but the third has the “ten o’clock in the morning habit,” and will not last very long. Of course, none of them can begin to live on the money he receives for his work. I do not think that any one of them could pay his tailor and haberdashery bill with his salary, and even the bond house clerk has to eat, you know.

Further investigation showed me that there is a perfect flood of these young men turned loose each year upon the financial districts of this country, not only here, but in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. They go to work for trivial salaries, because they care little or nothing about the amount that they receive. They are not working for wages, but they are working for emancipation. They do not want to be idlers, because they know that in these days idleness is doomed. They pick out Wall Street, particularly, I think, the bond department of Wall Street, because that is recognized as a world of real work that is fitted to the tastes and abilities of a well-educated but not too rigorously trained young man.

These young men are by no means effete dilletanti. They are strong, vigorous young men, and they plunge into what they know to be a competitive field with a full knowledge that they are not likely to go very far unless they earn their way. For in these same offices, and working in the field in hot competition with them, there is still an army of young men from the provinces, so to speak, who actually do live upon the proceeds of their work. It gave a real personal joy to discover that, in several of the banking houses which I looked into, the poor young man who starts out into the world in competition with these scions of the wealthy aristocracy is paid a better salary at the beginning than is his moneyed competitor, and has at least an equal chance for advancement. Indeed it is recognized that the wealthy young man has a marked advantage through his personal acquaintance with men of money, and more is expected of him in return from his training than is expected of the self-supporting clerk. As a rule, however, the real workers are given outlying districts of the country to canvass, while the aristocracy of the profession does its work in the city.

I sketch this phenomenon in some detail, because I think it is a very significant thing in its bearing upon the subject of this book. Perhaps more than any other one outlet it is an avenue leading toward honourable labour, suited to the capacity and the taste of our wealthy young men. That the market is crowded to-day, and has been crowded for five years past, more than it ever was crowded before in the history of the financial profession, speaks far more eloquently than I can speak of the change of sentiment amongst the wealthy.

In the Harvard Club, of a Saturday afternoon in winter, you will find groups of young men sitting around and talking, just as you would have found them fifteen years ago. There is one marked difference. Fifteen years ago they would have been talking about social events, the sports, and various other trivial things that went in those days to make up the sum and substance of a fashionable young man’s career. Nowadays many of these groups are earnestly discussing finance, not in its relation to their own private fortunes or misfortunes in the stock market, but in its broader aspect. You hear such phrases as “gold supply,” “premium bond,” “over-production of securities,” “diversion of money from the legitimate market,” “intrinsic value,” “investment outlook,” etc. They are, in fact, talking shop; and I do not think I have ever met any other class of men more addicted to the habit than these novitiates of the financial game.

Even their sisters, nurtured in luxury, and taught, as they still unhappily are, that elegant idleness is the proper portion of the sex, are beginning to rebel. They are seeking knowledge eagerly, sometimes in places and under circumstances that promise not the best of results. More particularly during the past five or ten years there has been the really extraordinary propaganda amongst the women of the younger set in our great cities looking toward the strengthening of the body and the building up of a vigorous and buoyant health that would have been considered actually vulgar in the generation that preceded them. Health, in fact, in many of the younger sets, has become almost a religion, a sort of fetich. They study hygiene, biology, and the mystery of life. Perhaps they are coming to know too much at too early an age, but in excuse let it be said that it is far better to know too much than to know too little.

On the other hand, I have already written of the tendency of the fashionable young women of the day toward charity and reform. They follow fads madly, working as hard and using up as much nerve force in this pursuit as any young woman of the middle class gives to her household work, or even to her bread-winning activities. I could name a dozen young women of the finest families in New York who within the past twelve months have actually thrown themselves into this sort of function with such fiery ardour and zeal that they have either totally neglected their social activities or broken down completely under the strain of double labour. Such instances are more numerous year by year. I do not know that I fully approve it, but I set it down here for the judgment of the world.

So, on the one hand, the ranks of the doomed class are being swiftly depleted by what I must call rank out and out desertion. The idle rich, particularly the younger set, are depleted year by year by squadrons of young men and women who go over to the army of workers. I do not know that there is any one single sign in the world in which I live that gives me greater hope than this. The dishonour of inactivity, sloth, and idleness is coming to be widely recognized in the very best classes of Society. Old prejudices are breaking down under the demands of the younger men for something to do. Even labour with the hands is not beneath them. As I pause to think, I could name at least half a dozen young men of my own set who within the past two or three years have gone into the railroad business, carried chains with engineering gangs in the field, or done other real manual labour. To-day the son of one of the oldest and noblest families in New York is superintending the laying of sewers in a New England town under a municipal contract.

If actual desertion is thinning the ranks of the idle rich, there is another and even greater cause which will tend in the future, as it is tending to-day, to limit the number of this class. It lies much deeper than the mere phenomenon of desertion. It is, in fact, nothing more nor less than the removal of the means of making gigantic fortunes through the exploitation of men.

I do not intend to dwell upon this phase of the passing of the idle rich to any great extent, because its effects are necessarily slow. Indeed, they will not be felt for many years to come. Yet I would point out one or two phases of this question that seem to me to be intensely interesting and vastly important. In the first place, the opportunities for the making of gigantic fortunes are being limited more and more by the world-embracing activities of those who already possess gigantic wealth.

Let any man discover in the mountains of Mexico, in the forbidding ridges of Alaska, or on the plains of the Yukon, great new deposits of iron, or coal, or oil, and immediately, almost before the news of such discovery has reached the world at large, a dozen secret agents rush to investigate. They represent the Pearsons, of London; the Guggenheims or Morgans, of New York; the Rockefellers or the Rothschilds, of New York or Germany. They are the first in the field; they preëmpt, for fortunes already far beyond competition, the opportunity of making a tremendous fortune out of the new discovery.

Think of the raw materials of commerce--sugar, meat, oil, iron, coal, copper, cotton, wheat, corn, lumber--is it not absolutely true that in the manufacture and exploitation of this tremendous mass of the raw material of wealth the possibility of amassing enormous fortunes is almost hopelessly limited by the activities and the world-girdling power of capitalist groups already far beyond the reach of competition?

The free land of America is gone. All these great staples that have been in generations past the vehicles in which men have been carried upon the road to lordly fortunes are already in the hands of a few hundred families. This fact, sinister as it undoubtedly is in its broader aspect upon the economic conditions of the country, must certainly tend to eliminate more and more the possibility for the creation of additional gigantic industrial fortunes in this country. In so far as this is true it is a very important item indeed among the forces that tend toward the elimination of the idle rich.

More than this, as I have pointed out already in a phrase, the growing knowledge on the part of the people of the ways and means by which they have been exploited for the creation of wealth will surely prevent any further long-continued growth of this same process. Men are being sent up to congress year by year sworn to break up and destroy the coördinate political machine that has made possible the growth of the power of the trusts. Earnest fighters like La Follette may well be watched, for though no little of his work and his talk is based on fallacy, yet in this at least he represents the temper of the whole United States, that he is a bitter and an ardent enemy of the concentration of wealth. The agitation over the Guggenheim claims in Alaska, the bursts of popular acclaim over land-fraud prosecutions in the West, the sardonic joy of the people over the retrieving of enormous coal land areas stolen by railroads, the warm enthusiasm of the West for government reclamation, conservation, and preëmption--these are signs of the times all pointing in the one direction.

They do not mark the end of the idle rich, to-day existent. They do point unmistakably toward the prevention of a new crop of great American fortunes won through exploitation of government property and popular rights. If you couple with them the ever-growing movement toward Socialism, and the hundred and one private propaganda along strange and often faulty economic lines, you cannot help but feel as I feel, that even if there were a revolution, in a hundred years, when the present great fortunes of America are subdivided, split up, and scattered among a thousand heirs, the wealth of America will certainly not be held ninety-five per cent. in the hands of five per cent. of the people and five per cent. in the hands of the rest of the people. And it is self-evident that since the gathering together of wealth in the hands of the few gave us the idle rich, the natural scattering of that wealth into more and more hands as the years go on must tend in the other direction.

_The days of the idle rich in America are as a tale that is told.
To-morrow in this land there will be one of two things, either an
evolution or a revolution._

_... The class I represent will again be merged into and
assimilated by the body of the nation.... We shall reënact in this
land some of the most terrible tragedies of history._

_Chapter Eleven_

THE END OF THE STORY

We have come to the end of the story. The days of the idle rich in America are as a tale that is told. To-morrow in this land there will be one of two things: either an evolution or a revolution. Either by one of those characteristically swift and marvellous changes for which the history of our race is noted, the class which I represent will again be merged into and assimilated by the body of the nation, as it was half a century ago, or we shall stand face to face with the forces of anarchy, Socialism, trade unionism, and a hundred other cults that either do represent or claim to represent the spirit of this mighty people, and we shall reënact in this land some of the most terrible tragedies of history.

I do not believe a middle course is possible. I know, of course, that the rank and file of the class I represent are blind and careless. I know that many of them, if they read this book, will lay it aside with a smile, calling it hysterical, calling it untrue. Wealth never yet in history has recognized its true position in the world, and I suppose it never will. Yet I am bound to say the things I think, and I can only trust that some few at least will be impelled to study facts and come before the tribunal of public opinion within the next few years armed and prepared for their own vindication.

I have written in vain if I have not made it clear that while the class of the wealthy has been increasing steadily during the past five years, faster than it ever increased in a similar period before, that growth in numbers has been accompanied also by an ever-increasing knowledge on the part of the wiser heads in the social world, by a serious, sober, and careful analysis of the real conditions among the wealthy themselves, and by a genuine adaptation of the minds of the wealthy to these new conditions as they come home to us. This is the one hope of American Society. It is not conclusive, but at least it points the way toward the future of America.

I do not want to be considered an alarmist or to cry panic from the house tops. Yet, in the light of facts, and in the face of the terrific changes that must take place within the next decade in our social and business structure, I cannot see how the business world of America can long escape a reckoning that has for years been overdue. There has to be in this country an adjustment that will shake the financial and business world to its foundations. It is possible, though not probable, that the necessary social changes of the next decade could be accomplished without a cataclysm; but with the concurrent business changes, the necessary shifting of the bases of our industrial system, the inevitable scaling down of the extravagance to which the nation as a whole has become accustomed, it is, I should say, utterly impossible that we can go through without an industrial disturbance that will strike far deeper than any we have known since 1893.

For the poison of gold has debauched and corrupted American Society, it has brought within our gates new armies of parasites, it has led to a degree of ostentation and of luxury, and even of vice and profligacy, comparable with that of the Roman Empire under Heliogabalus. I said in a former chapter that the middle class in America has almost if not quite lost its power. One of the most vital reasons for this fact is that much of that middle class has become confused with the lower fringes of the wealthy class, has learned to ape its habits and its luxuries, has come to live with ostentation and display, and has given up its traditional habits of frugality and thrift to waste its substance on a riotous form of living that is, as it were, but a faint and unworthy imitation of the habits of life of the wealthy.

In the process of adjustment that is unavoidable this drunkenness must pass. The great professional class, which in all ages has produced so many thinkers, writers, and makers of a nation’s history, must come back into its own; it must learn again the lesson of thrift and providence which it has learned so well in France and Germany, and which, forty years ago, were the most striking features of its character here in this land. If, as is true, the class I represent has very much to learn, I take it to be equally true that every other class in the land also has its lessons to learn. The process of learning is not to be an easy one. It may be that we as a nation will be tried in the fiery furnace of adversity, immersed in the gloomy depths of business depression, and crushed beneath a load of debt and repudiation before we have learned the first small principles upon which the newer order of things in America must be founded.

It is not my business, however, to talk to the people of America at large. I am addressing this book to Society, to the men and women whom I know, to the boys and girls who are to take our places in the social world as years go by. To them, in all sincerity, I am preaching a sermon of warning. I am calling them to gird themselves for battle--a battle the like of which has never been fought in this land before--a battle for life.

My appeal, if it were merely an appeal to save ourselves, would be sordid indeed. For it is ours to think of saving others. The bugle of the assured destiny of our race should quicken us to the service of a great and holy cause. The call is the call of the future, and the cause is the cause of humanity. I covet for you, my friends and members of my class, a higher destiny than the mere panic-stricken flight to safety. I am aware not only of your views, but of your virtues. Never before has there been such an opportunity for real service to mankind. You have the means, you have the power, you have the position, you have all, save only the will. I feel confident that if you give the matter study, and do not throw away this book as mere idle talk, the will to serve will come to you.

I know that the great bulk of Society can be reconstructed only by one agency, and that is death. To-day, in the South, there linger here and there many old men and women who never yet have ceased to call down curses from heaven upon the head and memory of Lincoln. It is perfectly self-evident that in this other cause of which I write, and that has come to be so near to me, the army of the unreconstructed must remain for many years tremendous. Particularly is this true of the newer recruits within the golden gates of the city of wealth. You may note that we are still enjoying the company of the first generation of the captains of industry. The second generation marches swiftly upon us. It will not be satisfied, it will not be sated, until it has reached the mellowness of age. It will follow the will-of-the-wisp of society to the bitter end. It is more stubborn, I think, than even that ancient culture of Boston and Philadelphia. Most certainly it is much more offensive to the public at large. In fact, more than any other specific subdivision of the army of wealth, it flaunts its glaring banners in the faces of the people.

I often think, as I watch the young men and women of my class trying to enjoy themselves, what a terrible problem we have bequeathed to them. I am no longer young; even my friends call me middle aged. At any rate, I have reached a stage in life where I can stop and weigh the facts, and come to a conclusion unbiased by the mere joy of living. Therefore I am moved to pity as I watch the very young of my class at play. For I am positively certain that three out of four of them will face, in the fulness of their lives, many bitter and heart-searching problems. Already the shadow of impending events falls heavily upon them. Many of them, even in their very tender youth, have learned that they belong to a hated class. How different is their lot from mine! For I, as a boy, was taught to consider myself the heir of all the ages. I was taught that I belonged to a class loved and respected for its virtues, envied and looked up to for its opportunities. I was taught that the women of my class were models and examplars to all the world. I was taught that the men were the uncrowned kings of America, leaders of thought, leaders of action, masters of destiny, masters of business.

To-day, in New York, the girls of our class cannot read the newspapers without learning the fearful lesson that their fathers are despised by the people and their mothers are suspected by the women of the nation. Ridicule, slander, sarcasm, and obloquy are poured upon us day by day. I sometimes wonder how the class can survive it. It is a fearful thing for a young girl to be brought up to womanhood in an atmosphere like this. It must breed either careless, heartless indifference, or a spirit of discontent. I hope it is the latter, but, alas! I very much fear it is more likely to be the former.

What are we going to do about it? I wish I could answer the question in one great, sweeping generality. Unfortunately, I do not believe it can be answered so. I know that the author of “The Trust: Its Book” has found an answer in a Utopian partnership between capital and labour. I know that Mr. Carnegie has found the answer in coöperation. I know that such skilful writers as Lloyd and Wells have solved the riddle by Socialism. I know that many thousands of the hardest thinking, hardest working citizens of this country are pledged already to the doctrine of government ownership of the sources of wealth. I know that Danton and Robespierre thought that they had found it when they set up the guillotine in Paris. I know that the Terrorists of Russia have worked out their own solution. I know that the Rockefeller Foundation, the Sage Foundation, and a thousand other mighty charities are intended as an answer. I know that Samuel Gompers and John Mitchell think that the extension of trade unionism will solve it. Above all, I know that many of the seasoned leaders of the social world believe that it will swiftly solve itself. I believe that Mr. Morgan and his wonderful group of associates thought they had taken a long step toward the solution when they threw the entire money power of the United States into the fight against panic in 1907. They believed that they had earned from the people of this country undying admiration, endless devotion, and an end of all warfare, because they thought they had stepped between panic and its victims.

Yet I cannot believe that any one of these solutions is the right one. No permanent change in the social structure of this nation can be accomplished except by a revolution or by the process of evolution, at which I have vaguely hinted here and there throughout this book.

Education must go on. The professional reformer, the sycophant who bows before us, the parasite who eats our bread and dispenses the wisdom of the ages in return, harp upon this theme. Only, to their mind, education means simply the training of the lower classes into a traditional habit of mind that will permit the continuance of the present conditions. To me education has no such meaning. More than any other class in the United States, we, the rich, need it. We must get it.

We must learn the truth about ourselves, our strength, our weakness, our true position in the world. We must learn the truth about our nation, our political institutions, our laws, our misuse of special privilege, our brigandage of the people’s rights at Washington and at every state capital in the land. We must learn the truth about the people, their rights, their wrongs, their power, and their weakness.

And, as we learn, we must act. We must ourselves eradicate the worst of our faults. We must ourselves condemn to death the idle rich. We must see to it that as our young men and women grow to maturity they learn to condemn and to scorn the sort of ostentatious display, the miserable vices, the degenerate luxuries, and the positive moral crimes that to-day are so rampant among us. We must, if we are to save ourselves and the world that we inherited, go back to the traditions of our fathers. We must reestablish in the social world of America the Spartan principles that marked that world in the days of Lincoln.

The age of arrogance is ended. That is a hard lesson. The idle rich of America, with the bitter voice of poverty and the deep tones of science alike ringing in their ears challenges of their existence as a class, may well tremble at the tones of that other voice which, though seeming silent, yet speaks aloud. The nation’s greatest builder, Lincoln, built as unto liberty. That temple from which he drove the idle driver of slaves, for these long years dedicated to the uses of Mammon, yet looms large in the visions of the disinherited.

Above all else that we may do on the positive side there remains the privilege of putting our study to practical work in the amelioration of the conditions that exist and the prevention of the recurrence of the phenomena that gave us these conditions. As a class we are, to-day, obstructionists. It is our class conservatism, you may say, that impels us to look with suspicion upon the rising of the people against, for instance, such a political debauch as has ruled Rhode Island for so long. We, on the contrary, should stand in the front ranks of such a battle as that. First of all, we, the people of this country, should detect political corruption, we should recognize the symptoms of the palsying touch of gold--and we should stand out before the world as the sworn champions of justice, equality, and honour.

For I do not believe that the march of progress in this land is to be turned backward. I cannot believe that the nation as a nation is to sink into the depths as England sank in the middle of the eighteenth century. I take it for granted that the wiping out of the idle rich is to be one of the first steps in a programme of national advancement, greater, more splendid, and far more universal than any other period of advancement and progress in the history of the nation. The idle rich are an obstacle in the way; therefore they must be eliminated or destroyed. Whether we, all the rich, as a class, are to share with them in that destruction depends upon whether or not we too set ourselves up as an obstacle in the path of the nation’s development.

As I have said, I cannot name a panacea, or dispose in a few rounded paragraphs of the problems that confront us. Personally I am convinced that many measures to which my class is to-day unalterably opposed will within the next few years take their places as laws upon our statute books. I am persuaded that sooner or later the solid opposition of the Eastern states to a graduated income tax will be broken down. I fully expect to see before I die the inauguration of inheritance taxes and legacy taxes in this country that will tend at least to level in the course of time the tremendous discrepancies that have grown up under our present system of taxation.

I do not expect to see a general triumph of pure Socialism. It may be that ultimately we shall experiment with government ownership of railroads and public utilities, but I should look forward with terror to any such experiment. It may be that in the remedying of the defects of our civilization we as a nation shall be impelled into excesses of this sort for at least a brief period of our history. If it be so, the nation will be quick to remedy its mistakes when once it has tried them out and found them wanting.

I do not expect to see the great industrial consolidations destroyed. I do expect to see in the very near future a period in which the wholesale exploitation of the raw materials of wealth--both labour and the products with which it works--will be curtailed. I do expect to see a very decided limitation placed upon the growth of tremendous industrial fortunes.

Granting such limitation, and granting patience upon the part of the people, I know that many of our defects will cure themselves. It is an old saying in this land that it is but three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves. That phrase is no mere generalization. It is based upon scientific data. Twenty years ago, in the old city of Worcester, Massachusetts, Mr. Joseph H. Walker carried on an investigation along this line. He discovered that out of seventy-five manufacturers in that city in 1850 only thirty died or retired with property; while of the sons of these manufacturers only six, in 1890, held any property or had died in the meantime in possession of such. In 1878 there were one hundred and seventy-six men engaged in the ten leading manufacturing trades of that city, and of these only fifteen had inherited the trade that they were carrying on.

Give us time and we shall solve all the problems of the age. The makers of America to-day are almost without exception men who have made themselves. That is an American tradition that we shall carry on throughout the ages. I cannot help but hope, even against the evidence of my own eyes and ears, that this plutocracy which to-day threatens the very life of the nation can be passed into American history without an epoch-marking revolution. Only, we of the wealthy class have many things to learn, and we must learn them faithfully, sitting at the feet of the historians.

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.