The Passing of the Idle Rich

by Frederick Townsend Martin

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.