Page:The fallacy of danger from great wealth.djvu/14

8 laws govern the accumulation and distribution of wealth, and government may well hesitate before it tries to go contrary to these natural laws.

One may challenge the world to show how there could be any system under which more money could be made available for wages than under the existing system of private property and the saving and investing of money. All there is now goes as wages. How could more go? Only by saving and investing more. It deserves consideration whether there ought not to be an effort to save more. The expenses of all classes, rich and poor, have mounted upward continually. What were formerly luxuries are now deemed necessaries. Reliance upon pensions by private corporations or by the government have taken the place somewhat of saving up for old age. There is a spirit of spending now and letting the future care for itself. Such a spirit ought, in the interests of workmen and of society, to be checked. So, too, for precisely the same reasons ought to be checked anything that will discourage men from saving and investing and building up big fortunes. We have seen that,