Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/744

724 best prepared for the new conditions have taken the lead and reaped the reward. The nations best qualified by habits of labor and enterprise for this vast competition were England and the United States. Among cities New York and Chicago have outstripped Norfolk and New Orleans. Among individuals certain industrial princes have been evolved, and these are our millionaires. On the face of the matter it is not apparent why Turkey or Spain has not as much claim on the increased wealth of the world, so large a proportion of which has been gained by the United States, as an ordinary citizen has on the profits which Mr. Gould derives from his telegraph system. If there were forty or fifty such countries situated near each other and capable of combining, very likely they would resolve that we had more than we ought to have, and compel us to disgorge our ill-gotten gains.

It is now apparent that the position to be here taken is that in the normal and usual case wealth is gained by doing a corresponding share of the world's work; and it may further be said that the amount of individual gain is no adequate measure of the public gain. A vague idea prevails that the great millionaires have gained their wealth through some mysterious and illegitimate trickery. As very few are aware of the beneficial operation of speculation, which is really an insurance to the producer against undue fluctuation in the price of the product, operations in Wall Street lend some support to this idea. Then, too, the ordinary formula for profits given in books on political economy (profit = wages of superintendence + interest + recompense for risk) hardly aids us in understanding American fortune-getting as a normal process. This formula really means that profits have a tendency to fall or rise to the level stated. With actual profit, particularly when realized in a new commercial age, it has very little to do. The fact is that profit is based on the value of the service done the public, in the public estimation. For particular cases a more accurate formula is, profit equals the total money value of the service rendered, less expenses and the public profit therein. In small business enterprises the flow of capital into very profitable investments is very rapid, at least in all except new communities. But it has not been so with large enterprises. The immobility and mismanagement of capital have been so great that a high premium has been put upon unusual foresight and sagacity during the advent of the age of railways. The history of the Western Union Telegraph Company, and of the fortune of the first Cornelius Vanderbilt, furnish excellent illustrations: we choose the latter.