Page:The fallacy of danger from great wealth.djvu/41

 inquiring whether there are not natural economic laws (without statute laws) to control and render harmless, and indeed beneficial, such great wealth and industry, some people have rushed headlong into a crusade against wealth. The great wealth and great industries of the present day in this country and others are indeed novelties. Nothing approaching them has ever before existed, so far as we know. Therefore, over-anxious people attack them. But so also the great wages of workmen and the great comfort and happiness of all classes of people are novelties which have come as a direct result of the great wealth saved and invested and the great industries of our day. If the fearful persons who are attacking great wealth and great industries should succeed in such attack, they would also by the same efforts have succeeded in reducing wages and the comfort and happiness of workmen and society.

One would like to think that it is wholly zeal for the public welfare that prompts attacks upon great wealth and great industries, and that ignorance of economic laws is the most blameworthy fault of such attacks.