"So long as individuals and private corporations have the power to monopolize natural resources or public utilities they will be the masters of all who do not share in the monopoly. The coal barons, the railway kings, the steel magnates and the whole piratical fraternity of multi-millionaires all subsist, like the regal plunderers of Europe, upon the fruits of privilege. They are an untitled nobility. The sunshine scintillates upon their gilded palaces in every great city of our land; but in the same cities there are dens of squalid misery and want, where sunbeams never penetrate, and where no kindly ray dispels the darkness of despair that lurks within."
In the 21st century, it is the owners of our privately held businesses and of corporate stock who fill this role. See "stock ownership" in the topics at left for more detail. And those who have studied the classical economists will recognize that natural resources fall into the category known as "Land."
The cited paragraph is an excerpt from a longer letter in "The Public" of June 9, 1900. It seems particularly timely given the reading aloud the U.S. Constitution in the House of Representatives, upon opening the new session of Congress today.
THE NEW NOBILITY.
The constitution of the United States provides, in article 1, section 9, that—
no title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.
Why not?
The "Federalist" does not tell us, and there is little said of it in the constitutional debates. Some of the members, indeed, spoke of creating a peerage, but said that such a thing could not be thought of, because of the deep-seated prejudice prevailing against a hereditary nobility. According to Yates's Minutes, Charles Pinckney said:
There is more equality of rank and fortune in America than in any other country under the sun; and this is likely to continue as long as the unappropriated western lands remain unsettled.
This statesman must have believed as Thomas Carlyle did, when in "Past, and Present," book III., chapter 8, that great Englishman wrote:
It is well said, "Land is the right basis of an Aristocracy;" whoever possesses the Land, he, more emphatically than any other, is Governor, Vice-King of the people.
Conversely stated, Mr. Pinckney's proposition is that with the valuable free lands of the west all taken, there would be danger of a constantly increasing tenant class, keeping pace with the growth of land monopoly and resulting finally in a landed aristocracy on the one hand and complete serfdom on the other; for population must increase, while the area of land cannot. But in view of the vast area of unoccupied land in the west at that time, its complete settlement seemed so remote a contingency that it was scarcely dreamed of by the members of the convention, and had no weight in their deliberations.
They thought it advisable, nevertheless, to put in a clause against the granting of titles of nobility. That clause was a part of the Virginia resolutions. By inserting it, the framers of our constitution showed their aversion to privilege, and their determination that whether privilege existed or or not the government should confer upon its possessors no honorary distinction. But by the use of that phrase they no more rendered their country exempt from the evils of a hereditary aristocracy than they would have made inocuous the serpent's venom by enacting that all snakes shall be called humming-birds. A title is but a name— the rank is but the guinea's stamp.
Privilege does not depend for its existence upon honorary distinctions. Mere titles do not create privilege, although privilege does ultimately create titles. Titles of nobility are but the emblems of the power behind them. Thy are dangerous only because of the "nobility" which they imply. It is not the duke who is dangerous, but the dukedom—the social condition of which the duke is but a symptom. The real value of such a title is in the power which it represents.
Such power is always based upon privilege—upon rights accruing solely to the holder of the title, to the exclusion of others not so favored; in short, it is based upon monopoly. From time immemorial the granting of noble titles has, with few exceptions, been either in recognition of power already in possession, or else has been accompanied by a grant of power—usually a grant of lands— commensurate with the supposed dignity of the title.
So long as individuals and private corporations have the power to monopolize natural resources or public utilities they will be the masters of all who do not share in the monopoly. The coal barons, the railway kings, the steel magnates and the whole piratical fraternity of multi-millionaires all subsist, like the regal plunderers of Europe, upon the fruits of privilege. They are an untitled nobility. The sunshine scintillates upon their gilded palaces in every great city of our land; but in the same cities there are dens of squalid misery and want, where sunbeams never penetrate, and where no kindly ray dispels the darkness of despair that lurks within.
According to Charles B. Spahr, Ph. D., author of a treatise on Distribution of Wealth, one percent of our families own more wealth than do the whole of the remaining 99 percent! Now, who are the favored one percent? Men like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie; men who own more than any individual could produce in a dozen centuries.
And are they not princes, lords, kings? They have no titles, to be sure. But what could a paltry title add to the man who controls, for instance, the oil-producing lands of the United States? They have no coronets, but they possess that without which the coronet is but a barbaric bauble. The man who bows to the throne really makes his obeisance to the power behind the throne. The king's word, the king's name, is but "as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal;" the king's power is everything. Crowns, scepters, robes of ermine and cloth of gold—all these are nothing; nothing but hated symbols. If the kingly power remain, what boots it though we lack the kingly name? A king by any other name is just as bad. The powerful Earl Warwick, known to history as "the king-maker," was no more a king-maker than one Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio; and if Hanna really wore the crown which he sometimes wears in the newspaper caricatures he would be no more dangerous than he is today. And what makes him dangerous? The privileges which he and his kind possess.
The real groundwork of an aristocracy is not in the unequal distribution of wealth. It lies farther back than that. We must seek it in the causes which lead to unequal distribution. It is in the inequality of opportunity to produce wealth. Equality of opportunity begets equality of condition. Whether you restrict the opportunities of one class, or grant special privileges to another, it matters not; the result is the same., and that result is seen in the class distinctions which inevitably follow in the wake of privilege.
As there may be serfs without shackles, so may there be nobles without titles. We have both in America today. The thing which our fathers greatly feared has come upon us. We are face to face with as great a crisis as ever threatened any republic since Rome first trembled at the glance of Caesar. The final struggle may not come this year, nor next, but it will come; and when it does, the American people will exclaim, in the words of the immortal Frenchman, "Tyrant, step from thy throne and give place to thy master!"
The ballot is the bloodless guillotine of the new revolution. It is a weapon mightier than the bayonet if used in time. Let us use it while it is still at our disposal. Put a true man in the white house, and the work of reform will be more easily accomplished. Inasmuch as the barons of the United States today, unlike those at Runnymede 800 years ago, are seeking special privileges for themselves instead of magna chartas for the people, it should be our first duty to remove from the presidency of this nation one whose instability of character and inordinate love of powerequaled only by his incapacity to exert it—mark him with peculiar distinctness in these respects as the American ectype of King John.
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