Thomas F. Ryan Contends that Opportunity
to Win Wealth is Necessary
to Stimulate Initiative.
Are the fortunes of to-day too vast? Does the getting of great wealth by individuals necessarily involve injustice to others? If it does, is it possible to prevent men from making much money without at the same time destroying the energy and initiative which spring up in the presence of opportunity?
These are familiar questions. Thomas F. Ryan has tried to answer them from the viewpoint of a successful financier, saying, in an article contributed to the Independent:
Fortunes which sometimes look excessive may be the result of rendering great services to the community. If a man by intense mental application or natural aptitude can introduce important economies into railroad management, he is worthy of a large salary. The salary would not in any case absorb the entire saving made to the stockholders of the railroad and to the public by the reforms introduced.
In some cases this claim of the inventor is compensated by the royalties paid under the patent law; and there are many services rendered in the matter of organization which are not patentable, but afford as striking benefits as patents. Among these, for instance, may be suggested the reduction in the cost of the manufacture of steel by Mr. Carnegie and those associated with him in the upbuilding of the industries now combined in the Steel Corporation.
From such services have come many of our great fortunes. If their possessors receive what amounts to a commission on the services they rendered, it is only a small part of the benefit they have conferred on the community.
Take away the opportunity for winning either money or distinction by rendering such services, and few men, as human nature is constituted, would render them.
It is right that competition between men should be brought within constantly narrower and narrower rules of justice. This is possible without taking away the initiative which makes men do things, and seems to me the direction in which, in spite of obstacles, humanity is tending.
Closely related to these arguments is the opinion of the New York Evening Post:
We do not believe that there is so formidable a jealousy and hatred of wealth, in itself, as is frequently alleged to exist, and to be growing. The sting lies in wealth unjustly acquired. It is ill-gotten gain, flaunting itself, that is the great breeder of socialism.