What policy the commonwealth may observe,—whether it shall allow the millionnaire to dispose of ten, twenty, or fifty per cent. as an encouragement and reward for his accumulations,—is a debatable question. To give him post-mortem control of fifty per cent. would be, it seems to me, an act of prodigal generosity to millionnaire heirs. That a dead man of a hundred millions should be allowed to keep fifty millions hoarded in private possession appears to me an extravagant claim, for even ten per cent. of that amount would be enough to spoil his children and unfit them for good citizenship. I believe it would be better for society if all inheritance of wealth were forbidden, and every boy and girl required to begin life with a few hundred dollars, and gain the position they deserved by their own abilities alone.
This reclamation of millionnaire estates by the commonwealth would not be so necessary but for the fact that the world has been ruled by false principles, and in all past ages millionnaires have, with few exceptions, regarded their vast possessions as something on which the public had no claim in justice, as being the true sources of wealth—something on which the brotherhood of humanity had no claim—something which was not a sacred trust for the benefit of mankind—something which they should clutch with an iron grasp, as long as possible, to keep it intact and unbroken, and still speaking from the grave, hold it protected from all the claims of humanity, to magnify their own names in their descendants, and keep their offspring the lords dominant of society,—thus making it really a curse instead of a blessing; and as neither the moralists nor the clergy have ever taught them anything else, such is still their tendency, with a few such exceptions as Peter Cooper and George Peabody. But when society substitutes rational ethics and simple justice for old traditions and debasing customs, the destruction of wealth will be recognized as a crime, no matter how it was obtained; and such profligates as the Prince of Wales, who spends half a million yearly, and then calls upon his avaricious mother for one or two millions to silence the clamor of creditors whom he has defrauded, will be no longer feasted, admired, and imitated, for justice will be embodied in law and the race of profligates will have been exterminated.
If any owner of these hoards, when he is compelled to give them up, politely throws out five per cent. or even two per cent. for something that he considers worthy, it is received with great laudation as something not to have been expected. A Cleveland millionnaire was lauded for a petty donation, less than he had expended on his old wife’s laces. As philanthropists millionnaires are generally great failures. They did not study the public welfare through life, and they do not know how to promote it; their benefactions generally go to institutions that perpetuate the old order of mediæval conservatism, and delay the progress of humanity. They are incompetent as trustees. One man with the wealth of an Astor or a Rockefeller, and the overflowing love guided by the wisdom of intuition (so conspicuous in Jesus that men have worshipped him as a God, and elevated their own natures by the worship), could accomplish more than all that American wealth has ever done upon this continent.
Therefore by that right of eminent domain which is good over lands occupied by the living, and far better over estates abandoned by the dead, it becomes the duty of society to maintain the republic, to assert the supreme law of justice, and thereby teach the doctrine so long forgotten by followers of Christianity, that all our powers and resources beyond our own necessities belong to our brothers. Such are the principles of every real Christian. Such was the sentiment of John Wesley; and his expression, if I recollect rightly, was that he would consider himself a thief if he died with more than ten pounds in his possession.
These doctrines are not entirely strange—the world is beginning to look in this direction already. The heirship of the state is an idea already broached in France, sustained by Clemenceau, Pelletan, and many other distinguished citizens, and discussed in the Chamber of Deputies. The proposition was to limit the law of inheritance, and substitute the heirship of the state for all collateral heirs. That eminent and practical philanthropist, M. Godin, whose name has been immortalized by the Industrial Palace at Guise, warmly espoused this idea in all its breadth, and said:—
“When an individual dies, society has then the right to take to itself what he leaves, for it has been the chief aid of the deceased. Without its aid, without its institutions, he could never have been able to amass the riches of which he is at his death the holder. Society inherits wealth, then, to use for the same work of social progress already accomplished; that is to say to allow others, the surviving in general (not the privileged strangers to the creation of the existing riches), to continue their labor and co-operation in the common social work. The heredity of the State is then just, both in principle and in fact.”
The two measures which are necessary now are the Department of Productive Labor and the law of inheritance by the commonwealth, which limits the transmission of estates above a hundred thousand dollars, giving the commonwealth a share, rising from one to ninety-nine per cent. according to the magnitude of the estate—or some other form of taxation (if there be a better) producing equivalent results.
I do not propose these measures as THE REMEDY par excellence for our unhappy social condition. Not at all. They are merely the gigantic blows from the right arm of the commonwealth, by which the curses established in the dark and bloody past, crushing man and woman to the earth, shall be hurled into oblivion. The true, absolute, and complete REMEDY is that industrial, intellectual, hygienic, and ethical training of all, which I have published as the “New Education” which will make new men. These are bold and revolutionary measures,[8] but the surgery of the knife is sometimes what humanity demands. The mad riot of rivalry and selfishness must be restrained before it brings the republic to ruin. The power of land monopoly must be broken by a land tax, and the post-mortem despotism which perpetuates accumulated evils must be thrown off by just and practicable legislation.
We must act upon the undisguised truth that individual humanity is not yet properly educated, and not yet qualified to exercise its trusteeship of wealth, for the hard struggles against the oppressive power of poverty, sickness, robbery, fraud, and sudden calamity have made the self-protective faculties predominant, and the sharp rivalry and competition of business has so increased their predominance that the thought of public welfare is never paramount, and is but an occasional glimmer, and the death-bed surrender of wealth, if it considers the welfare of society at all, considers it so blindly that a large proportion of the benevolent endowments are of little real value.
It is, therefore, necessary that the outcry of suffering and the warning of danger should rouse the public conscience to nobler principles, and that society in its maximum wisdom, which embraces a few earnest philanthropists, many capable financiers and economists, very many tender-hearted women who will not consent to suffering, and who are destined to participate in government, as well as a great many who are personally conscious of wrongs that need rectifying, should assume the administration of the SUPERFLUOUS WEALTH abnormally accumulated.