Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/381

 OUR NATIONAL PROSPERITY 375

then the total of employment and opportonity would be no less^ bnt in addition to "no opportunity wages ^' most people would receive a moder- ate property income — ^most people would participate in the excess of production due to opportunity. The idea that great fortunes are ex- cusable on the grounds of giving employment is conspicuous in the writings of Andrew Carnegie. He looks upon the rich man as if he held the property of society in trust, or merely controlled it, to be administered by his higher powers of discernment. He excuses the unearned increment on the ground that the rich as a rule reinvest it, thus giving more and more employment. There is a strong tendency in the literature of the day to substitute the word control for own. The rich may control much property they do not own, but that is not included when we speak of their wealth. Even where ownership is meant we are prone to speak of a man as controlling vast properties upon which thousands are working, as if he did not actually own it and personally derive every possible benefit from it as much as a child derives benefit from a stick of candy in hand.

But if service incomes that actually accrue are less than the wealth produced, are they less than the wealth produced by a proportional amount? Are service incomes proportional to the product? In view of the great complexity of labor interchange, it would be impossible to answer this in the light of statistics. Who, for example, would under- take to say just what value was added to production by the services of a locomotive engineer? The main force tending to an irrational distri- bution is undoubtedly property income, so that this eliminated, we might fairly say that service incomes tend roughly to become propor- tional to product.

But even if we grant that service incomes are proportional to product, we must not forget that the ability to produce depends upon how much a man participates in property income. It depends upon leisure and education. Grant that your laborer is a shiftless sort and does not really produce more than $1.50 a day, still, were he the possessor of a small property income, his increased income would be enough to in- crease his ability to produce and thus increase his service income as well. The differences in what men do produce is vastly greater than the differ- ences in their latent abilities. That among those born in poverty to die in poverty a large portion never produce much through lack of oppor- tunity for development of productive powers, is evidenced by the dra- matic cases of one born in poverty risen to be one of the world's most productive workers, Andrew Carnegie himself being such an example. If the seeds of these high productive powers were implanted only in a very limited portion of the human stock, then we should expect the chil- dren of the founders of fortunes to be the only fortune-makers. But this is precisely contrary to the facts. The riff raff of Oreat Britain

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