The Passing of the Idle Rich

by Frederick Townsend Martin

For the grim fact stands out beyond denial that the men who are the workers of the nation, and the women and the children dependent upon them, are not to-day given the opportunities that are their proper birthright in free America; and that, struggle as they will, save as they may, lift their voices in protest as they dare, they cannot obtain from our industrial hierarchy much more than a mere living wage. And, on the other hand, it is equally true that the wage of capital is high, that the class of idle rich has grown out of all proportion, and that it has taken upon itself a power and an arrogance unsurpassed in the industrial history of the world.

Somewhere there is something wrong. I speak as a rich man. I speak as a representative of the class of which I write, and to which in particular I address myself. We can no longer blind ourselves with idle phrases or drug our consciences with the outworn boast that the workingman of America is to-day the highest paid artisan in the world. We know those lying figures well. Many a time I myself, in personal argument, have shown that the American workman receives from one and a half to three times as much as his English cousin at the same trade; but we know now that it means nothing. We are learning, instead of envying the American workingman his lot, to pity more deeply that English cousin. We are learning, too, that what we give our workers in wages we take back from them in the higher cost of necessities, in food, in clothing, in medicine, in insurance—in a hundred devious ways all with one tendency—to keep the living margin down.

Many centuries ago two great Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, predicted that the time would come when the tools of wealth production—machinery—would have reached such an advanced stage of development that it would become unnecessary to enslave anybody for the sake of allowing any one class to devote itself to the pursuit of culture. These great philosophers believed in slavery during that period of the world’s development in which they lived, on the ground that only by the exploitation of forced labour could any class be left free to develop the higher attributes of mankind. Yet both looked forward to the time when, in the progress of humanity toward the ideal, the perfection of methods would permit the emancipation of all mankind.

Aristotle and Plato were no visionaries. Their dreams, so far as the methods are concerned, are to-day realities; but, alas, how different the result! Instead of emancipation we have welded about the necks of the people the chains of industrial slavery. It is true that the form of slavery, the direct exploitation of the bodies of men, has been wiped out in every civilized nation; but is it not equally true that since our own great struggle for freedom from the pollution of chattel slavery we have but stepped out of a process of direct exploitation of a few enchained slaves into a process far more expansive and embracing far more people, namely, the indirect exploitation of wage workers for the benefit of capital?

The fruit of the genius of the inventors of the world is plucked not by the hands of the workers, but by the hands of the comparatively small and personally insignificant class who, by virtue of the genius of their fathers, or by virtue of mere chance, administer the tremendous power of capital.

The evolution of the ages, then, has brought about this strangely ironical condition. Humanity is face to face with a God-given opportunity to acquire and apply knowledge. The wealth producing machinery of the world has the capacity to give to all men the opportunity of enjoying leisure. Knowledge and culture are the proper birthright of humanity to-day. Even in the face of obstacles, knowledge and culture spread among the people. Only one great obstacle remained to block the fulfillment of the prophecy of the great philosophers. That obstacle is the idle rich. It is the leisure class that to-day destroys the spirit of our dream.

It cannot be for long. We in America are moving fast toward social revolution. Conflicts between labour and capital are assuming the proportions of civil war. The once powerful middle class, which is the safety of every nation, is to-day weak, and is every day declining. Soon, politically it will be a memory, and the battle field will be cleared for conflict.

It is, I know, a hopeless and a thankless task for any man to raise his voice in an appeal for peace. The forces which have been set in motion in the making of America so far must, I suppose, run their allotted course. To-day the class spirit in America is thoroughly aroused, and it is almost with terror that I, a representative of one of the two classes that are to fight this battle, raise my feeble voice in warning to the other members of my class.

But lately I have read again a monumental work, written fifty years ago by a Southerner, in an attempt to turn the minds of his fellow citizens from the fatal error of chattel slavery. The book is called “The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It.” Of all the books that I have ever read upon public problems it has always seemed to me to be the most sane and factual. Here is a paragraph taken from it which I marked when first I read the book, and which I have read over and over again with infinite satisfaction:

The truth is that slavery destroys or vitiates, or pollutes whatever it touches. No interest of society escapes the influence of its clinging curse. It makes Southern religion a stench in the nostrils of Christendom—it makes Southern politics a libel upon all the principles of republicanism—it makes Southern literature a travesty upon the honourable profession of letters.... When will the South, as a whole, abandoning its present suicidal policy, enter upon that career of prosperity, greatness, and true renown, to which God by His word and His providence is calling it? That voice, by whomsoever spoken, must yet be heard and heeded. The time hastens—the doom of slavery is written—the redemption of the South draws nigh.