The man with the hundred millions can build the great railroad across the continent. There is no more important work now than the building of that road.
The man with the thousand millions can control the great oil trust and a dozen other trusts. He taxes the people—but his hundreds of millions do an important and necessary work.
It is well for us all that such a man has sacrificed health, digestion, happiness and all idea of self-indulgence to the accumulation of a vast industrial army of dollars.
The scramble for money, looked at without understanding, is a horrid sight. But horrid also is the sight of a battle that frees slaves.
When the battle of money shall end, the score will be on the right side of humanity's ledger.
A few forgotten billionaires will have struggled and died. Some millions of men will have died disappointed.
But industry will have been brought to perfection. Universities, libraries and other benefactions will abound, pleading for recognition of the money-making dyspeptics. Human ingenuity will have contrived some means for freeing men's minds from the dread of destitution.
The money struggle will have ended and humanity will be much better off, much further advanced—as it is at the end of all great and painful struggles.
WHITE-RABBIT MILLIONAIRES AND OTHER THINGS
The most wonderful thing in America is—what do you think? It is the absolute nullity of the man of many millions. It is the vapid colorlessness, the dull inactivity, the total lack of imagination among men whose power is unlimited. What possibilities are spread out before the man who by signing his name could set to work in any direction a million of his fellow men! The world stands ready to obey his orders; every law says that he shall have whatever he demands. Any conception born in his brain can become reality as soon as conceived. But there is no conception there.