"There is nothing to fear," says the complacent Robert Collyer, "from the multimillionaire." The reason for Mr. Collyer's confidence is his assumption that "few fortunes survive three generations." This assumption is a pleasant tradition, formerly phrased as "three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves;" but it has long since ceased to express a fact, since John Jacob Astor showed Americans how to establish fortunes they have become as stable in America as in England.
But even if the tradition were as true today as it was in the earlier periods of the settlement of this new country, what satisfaction could a thoughtful man draw from it?
The social evil is not great fortunes. It is great poverty among those who earn so much wealth that they do not get.
To them it can make no difference whether fortunes are stable or not.
The great, obtrusive, undeniable and invariable fact is that no matter who may be rich nor how long his fortune may remain intact, the mass of those who do the work of the world, and without whose work there would be fortunes for nobody, are permanently poor and dependent.
To borrow a suggestive illustration from the gambling table, what matters it to the many who never win if the few who do soon lose their winnings again?
-- from "The Public," June 9, 1900.
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