Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/380

374 if he did not have it, would hate with envious jealousy the man who had it. And remember, also, that both sides of this shield are true.

The man roused into furious discontent and envy because he sees other men better off than himself would most decidedly misbehave himself if he got wealth. Moreover, such an attack is in itself an exceptionally crooked and ugly tribute to wealth, and therefore the proof of an exceptionally ugly and crooked state of mind in the man making the attack. Venomous envy of wealth is simply another form of the spirit which in one of its manifestations takes the form of cringing servility toward wealth, and in another the shape of brutal arrogance on the part of certain men of wealth. Each one of these states of mind, whether it be hatred, servility or arrogance, is in reality closely akin to the other two, for each of them springs from a fantastically twisted and exaggerated idea of the importance of wealth as compared to other things.

The clamor of the demagogue against wealth, the snobbery of the social columns of the newspapers which deal with the doings of the wealthy, and the misconduct of those men of wealth who act with brutal disregard of the rights of others seem superficially to have no fundamental relation; yet in reality they spring from shortcomings which are fundamentally the same, and one of these shortcomings is the failure to have proper ideals. The community that cherishes such ideals and that admires most the men who approximate most closely to those ideals—in that community we shall not find any of these unhealthy ideas of wealth.

This failure must be remedied in large part by the actions of you and your fellow-teachers, your fellow-educators throughout this land. By your lives, no less than by your teachings, you show that, while you regard wealth as a good thing, you regard other things as still better. It is absolutely necessary to earn a certain amount of money; it is a man's first duty to those dependent upon him to earn enough for their support, but after a certain point has been reached money-making can never stand on the same plane with other and nobler forms of effort.

The roll of American worthies numbers men like Washington and Lincoln, Grant and Farragut, Hawthorne and Poe, Fulton and Morse, St. Gaudens and MacMonnies; it numbers statesmen and soldiers, men of letters, artists, sculptors, men of science, inventors, explorers, roadmakers, bridge builders, philanthropists, moral leaders in great reforms; it numbers all these and scores of others; it numbers men who have deserved well in any one of countless fields of activity; but of the rich men it numbers only those who have used their riches aright, who have treated wealth not as an end but as a means, who have shown good conduct in acquiring it and not merely lavish generosity in disposing of it.

And thrice fortunate are you to whom it is given to lead lives of resolute endeavor for the achievement of lofty ideals, and, furthermore,