Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

“A great fortune is a great power, doctor, and not every man is fit to be intrusted with great power. To-day no second-class power in Europe can negotiate a treaty or make even a defensive war without the consent of the Rothschilds, while in America the owner of fifty millions is more powerful than the president of the United States, and the owner of ten millions more influential than the governor of a State.

“And so he ought to be,” interposed the doctor. “The man who can by fair means make $10,000,000 is more useful to the community in which he lives than a dozen governors of States.”

“But look at the danger to the people, doctor, of these great fortunes. There are ten men in the United States whose aggregate wealth amounts to $500,000,000, and who represent, and control, and wield the influence of property amounting to $3,000,000,000. If these men should choose to settle their rivalries and combine their interests and efforts, they could about fix the prices of every acre of land, every barrel of flour, every ton of coal, and every day’s wages of labor between Bangor and San Francisco. They could name every senator, governor, judge, congressman, and legislator in twenty States. They could rule a greater empire than any possessed by crowned kings. They could promulgate ukases more absolute, more despotic, and more certain of being enforced, than any which ever went forth from St. Petersburg to carry desolation to a race. They could say to the laborer in the grain-fields, ‘Henceforth you shall be reduced to the condition of your brother in England or Scotland, and eat meat but once a week.’ They could say to the toiler in the humming factory or over the red forge, ‘Henceforth you must toil twelve hours in each twenty-four.’ They could say to every wageworker in the land, ‘Henceforth we will take all the results of your labor, and give you only the slave’s share—existence and subsistence.’”

“All you need, Professor John Thornton,” said Dr. Eustace, “is a long beard, a woman with green goggles and a tamborine, a fat boy with a snare drum, and a pair of bellows in your chest, to be a Salvation Army seeking recruits for the church of Anarch. You know just as well as I do that you are talking nonsense, and that the capitalists of our country would be neither so inhuman nor so unwise as to push their power as you indicate.”

“Maybe not, doctor, maybe not, but their ability to so use their power if they choose is a menace to a free people, and a standing inducement to disorder, and unless the plutocrats cease their aggressions the people may invoke the motto, ‘Salva republica suprema lex,’ and tax all great fortunes out of existence.”

“What aggressions do you refer to, professor? For the life of me I cannot see that this country or this people have any just cause of complaint. The census returns of 1890 show that in the preceding ten years there was added to our national wealth, values amounting to nearly $20,000,000,000.”

“The census returns tell only a part of the story, doctor. The cottages of the land will tell you that while as a nation we may have grown of late years very rich and prosperous, yet among the individuals composing the nation its wealth is possessed and its prosperity enjoyed within a very narrow circle. The value of all the property in the United States in the year 1890 was $66,000,000,000. Do you know that $40,000,000,000, or sixty per cent of the wealth of America, is owned by less than forty thousand people? Do you know that in the last twenty years the laborers of the United States have added to the general wealth of the nation, values amounting to $30,000,000,000?”

“Well, what is there to complain of in that fact?” questioned the doctor.

“The complaint is that the money has not been divided among the ten million workers who earned it. The complaint is that it has not furnished each of ten million households with a $3,000-shield against the assaults of poverty. The complaint is that as fast as created it has been seized by the centripetal tendency which now dominates our civilization and hurried into the strong boxes of ten thousand Past-Masters of the art of accumulating the earnings of other people.”

“The complete answer, professor, to your diatribe is that the accumulations of which you speak are not the earnings of other people. The greater portion of this wealth has been developed from the bounty of nature in ways which could not have been pursued without large combinations of capital.”