Page:The fallacy of danger from great wealth.djvu/12

6 use his money for foolish personal pleasures for himself or for others. The probability that a man who has spent his life in building up a fortune will turn about and do such a thing is very remote.

This economic law does not depend for its action on the moral character of the capitalist or good-will towards workmen. The meanest-spirited accumulator of wealth (if such a man could conceive great enterprises and carry them through), equally with the most benevolent, is subject to the law. It is a safe and sufficient protection against the imagined dangers of the accumulation of great wealth. Men clamor "danger," "danger," yet these dangers, so much paraded as the capital stock of agitators and feared even by some good people, have never been realized and never will be, for this beneficent law prevents any such thing. The poorest may look with equanimity, or, rather, with gladness, because of his own personal and selfish interest, upon the increase of the wealth of the richest. No rich man growing richer need feel that he is taking from others, but rather he should rejoice that, as he grows richer, he is necessarily enriching others.