Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/812

794 and take him in as an equal partner? This is substantially what all ask for who insist that labor shall have all it produces, without regard to the part which capital plays in production. It would not be just; there would be a radical and far-reaching wrong in rewarding improvidence and shiftlessness equally with risk and enterprise. To do this would be to outrage moral government, by which an action of any kind should be followed by its fitting sequence. The practical results of such a course could not be good. We must reiterate that if, in the event of giving all to labor, there were no immediate falling off in the amount of capital, such falling off would nevertheless soon come about through mistaken investment, since the shrewd and enterprising, into whose hands capital now usually falls, are precisely those who are best qualified to discover the fields in which investments may be made to the best advantage; for it is by the utilization of such fields that the greatest amount and variety of productions are had, and most is added to the general wealth of the civilized world. Profit and utility thus go along hand in hand. But the greatest loss from the indiscriminate reward of economical misdoing would be in the actual reduction of savings and diminution of capital.

Then, what is the economical function the rich man performs? He conserves the surplus of production, holding it in trust for the good of all, and without him there would be no civilization. The accumulator, the self-made rich man, usually expends only a percentage, often a small percentage, of his income, on his own gratifications. What he retains beyond this can not go to his own behoof, and, if it helps anybody to more of the goods of life, it must, as a rule, help others; and it is precisely this surplus, thus saved and used as the basis of every industrial and commercial enterprise, that makes him rich and keeps him rich. So bound up is he with the system of civilized methods that he can not add to his wealth by successful enterprise on the methods which legitimate business requires without helping others. The worthy rich man is, indeed, a self-exalted prince of civilization, who holds his wealth in trust for the maintenance and further advancement of that civilization. Surely he is entitled to our blessings rather than to our curses.

Still, when we see wealth in the hands of the worthless who live in idleness, but to exemplify the vanities of life, while many a one who is a useful member of society, with capabilities of still greater usefulness, is struggling in the battle of life with odds against him, we may impulsively curse the lottery that favors the one and dooms the other.

"It's hardly in a body's power To keep, at times, frae being sour, To see how things are shared; How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs in countless thousands rant, And ken na how to wair't."