To assert today that the rich are for the most part entirely harmless is
to dare much, for the contrary opinion is greatly in favor. Such wholesale
condemnation of the rich assumes a more general and a more specific form.
They are said to be harmful to the body politic simply because they have
more money than the average: their property has been wrongly taken from
persons who have a better right to it, or is withheld from people who need
it more. But aside from being constructively a moral detriment from the
mere possession of wealth, the rich man may do specific harm through
indulging his vices, maintaining an inordinate display, charging too much
for his own services, crushing his weaker competitor, corrupting the
legislature and the judiciary, finally by asserting flagrantly his right
to what he erroneously deems to be his own. Such are the general and
specific charges of modern anti-capitalism against wealth. Like many deep
rooted convictions, these rest less on analysis of particular instances
than upon axioms received without criticism. The word spoliation does
yeoman service in covering with one broad blanket of prejudice the most
diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My own
conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under the general
or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive axiom, but simply on
the knowledge of a number of particular fortunes and of their owners. Such
a road towards truth is highly unromantic. The student of particular
phenomena is unable to pose as the champion of the race. But the method
has the modest advantage of resting not on a priori definitions, but on
inductions from actual experience; hence of being relatively scientific.
Before sketching the line of such an investigation, let me say that in
logic and common sense there is no presumption against the wealthy person.
Ever since civilization began and until yesterday it has been assumed that
wealth was simply ability legitimately funded and transmitted. Even modern
humanitarians, while dallying with the equation wealth = spoliation, have
been unwilling wholly to relinquish the historic view of the case. I have
always admired the courage with which Mr. Howells faced the situation in
one of those charming essays for the Easy Chair of _Harper's_. Driving one
night in a comfortable cab he was suddenly confronted by the long drawn
out misery of the midnight bread line. For a moment the vision of these
hungry fellow men overcame him. He felt guilty on his cushions, and
possibly entertained some St. Martin-like project of dividing his
swallowtail with the nearest unfortunate. Then common sense in the form of
his companion came to his rescue. She remarked "Perhaps we are right and
they are wrong." Why not? At any rate Mr. Howells was not permitted to
condemn in a moment of compassion the career of thrift, industry and
genius, that had led him from a printer's case to a premier position in
American letters, or, more concretely, he received a domestic dispensation
to cab it home in good conscience, though many were waiting in chilly
discomfort for their gift of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of
this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a
particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in
mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly
rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in
notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are
much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they
divorce quickly and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. By
such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful stretches into a
procession, much as a dozen sprightly supernumeraries will keep up an
endless defile of Macduff's army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that
some of the great wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my
subject is not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people
constitute an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too
is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is
chiefly a _succès de scandale_. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle
without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the
sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually
credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking
multimillionaire has any representative standing. He is not what a poor
person means by a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your
neighborhood, and she will name all who live gently and do not have to
worry about next month's bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to be
exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes to be
rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but corresponds roughly
to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding to government decree. Rich
people, since the income tax, are officially those who pay the tax but not
the surtax. Families with an income not less than four thousand dollars
nor more than twenty thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us
once for all admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of
quite harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate the
general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are included
in the first class of income taxpayers--on from four to twenty thousand,
that most of the property here held is blamelessly held in good
hands--wealth that in no fair estimate can be regarded as harmful. In
terms of British currency, our category of the middling rich would include
the poorer individuals of the upper classes, the richer persons of the
lower middle class, and the upper middle class as a whole. This comparison
is made not to apply an alien class system which holds very inadequately
here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology.
The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and
artists. My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist
would quite brazenly call the _haute bourgeoisie_. It is quite a
comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately
successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their more highly
paid employees, but including also many artists, and teachers of all
sorts. Incidentally it is an employing and borrowing class in various
degrees, hence especially subject to the exactions of the labor union at
one end, and of the great capitalist and the Trust at the other.
The general harmlessness of the wealth of this class rests upon the fact
that it is in small part inherited, but mostly earned by individual
effort, while such effort has usually been honestly and efficiently
rendered and paid for at a moderate rate. In fact the amount of capacity
that can be hired for the slightest rewards is simply amazing. It is the
distinction of this class as compared both with the wage earning and the
capitalist class--both of which agree in overvaluing their services and
extorting payment on their own terms--that it respects its work more than
it regards rewards. Consider the amount of general education and special
training that go to make a capable school superintendent, or college
professor; a good country doctor or clergyman--and it will be felt that no
money is more honestly earned. This is equally true of many lawyers and
magistrates, who are wise counsellors for an entire country side. It is no
less true of hosts of small manufacturers who make a superior product with
conscience. For the wealth, small enough it usually is, that is thus
gained in positions of especial skill and confidence, absolutely no
apology need be made. I sometimes wish that the Socialists for whom any
degree of wealth means spoliation, would go a day's round with a country
doctor, would take the pains to learn of the cases he treats for half his
fee, for a nominal sum, or for nothing; would candidly reckon his normal
fee against the long years of college, medical school and hospital, and
against the service itself; would then deduct the actual expenses of the
day, as represented by apparatus, motor, or horse service--I can only say
that if such an investigator could in any way conceive that physician as a
spoliator, because he earned twice as much as a master brick-layer or five
times as much as a ditch digger--if, I say, before the actual fact, our
Socialist investigator in any way grudges that day's earnings, his mental
and emotional confusion is beyond ordinary remedy. And such a physician's
earnings are merely typical of those of an entire class of devoted
professional men.
We do well to remind ourselves that the great body of wealth in the
country has been built up slowly and honestly by the most laborious means,
and accumulated and transmitted by self-sacrificing thrift. A rich person
in nine cases out of ten is merely a capable, careful, saving person,
often, too, a person who conducts a difficult calling with a fine sense of
personal honor and a high standard of social obligation. We are too much
dazzled by the occasional apparition of the lawyer who has got rich by
steering guilty clients past the legal reefs, of the surgeon who plays
equally on the fears and the purses of his patients, of the sensational
clergyman who has made full coinage of his charlatanism. All these types
exist, and all are highly exceptional. Most rich persons are
self-respecting, have given ample value received for their wealth, and
have less reason to apologize for it than most poor folks have to
apologize for their poverty.
Furthermore: for the maintenance of certain humdrum but necessary human
virtues, we are dependent upon these middling rich. It has been frequently
remarked that a lord and a working man are likely to agree, as against a
bourgeois, in generosity, spontaneous fellowship, and all that goes to
make sporting spirit. The right measure of these qualities makes for charm
and genuine fraternity; the excess of these qualities produces an enormous
amount of human waste among the wage earners and the aristocrats
impartially. The great body of self-controlled, that is of reasonably
socialized people, must be sought between these two extremes. In short the
building up of ideals of discipline and of habits of efficiency and of
good manners and of human respect is very largely the task of the middle
classes. Whereas the breaking down of such ideals is, in the present
posture of society, the avowed or unavowed intention of a considerable
portion of laboring men and aristocrats. The scornful retort of the
Socialist is at hand: "Of course the middle classes are shrewd enough to
practice the virtues that pay." Into this familiar moral bog that there
are as many kinds of morality as there are economic conditions of mankind,
I do not consent to plunge. I need only say that the so-called middle
class virtues would pay a workman or a lord quite as well as they do a
bourgeois. Moreover, while workmen and lords are prone to scorn the
calculating virtues of the middle classes, there is no indication that the
_bourgeoisie_ has selfishly tried to keep its virtues to itself. On the
contrary there is positive rejoicing in the middle classes over a workman
who deigns to keep a contract, and an aristocrat who perceives the duty of
paying a debt. In fine we of the middle classes need no more be ashamed of
our highly unpicturesque virtues than we are of our inconspicuous wealth.
So far from being in danger of suppression, we middling rich people are
likely to last longer than the capitalists who exploit us in practice, and
the workmen who exploit us on principle. Theoretically, and perhaps
practically, the very rich are in danger of expropriation. Theoretically
the course of invention may limit or almost abolish all but the higher
grades of labor. The need of the more skilful sort of service in the
professions, in manufacture, in agency of all sorts, is sure to persist.
The socialists expect to get such service for much less than it at present
brings, that is to make us poor and yet keep us working. Such a scheme
must break down, not through the refusal of the middling rich to keep at
work;--for I think there is loyalty enough to the work itself to keep most
necessary activities going after a fashion, even under the most untoward
conditions;--but because to make us poor is to destroy the conditions
under which we can efficiently render a somewhat exceptional service. Our
wealth is not an extraneous thing that can be readily added or taken away.
It is our possibility of self-education and of professional improvement,
it is the medium in which we can work, it is our hope of children. To take
away our wealth is to maim us. There is nothing humiliating in such an
avowal. It is merely an assertion of the integrity of one's life and work.
As a matter of fact no class is so well fitted to face the threat of a
proletarian revolution as we harmless rich. It is the class that produces
generals, explorers, inventors, statesmen. A social revolution with its
stern attendant regimentation would bear most heavily on the relatively
undisciplined class of working people. The disciplined class of the
middling rich is better prepared to meet such an eventuality. Accordingly
it is no mere selfishness or complacency that leads the middling rich to
oppose the pretensions of proletarianism on one side and of capitalism on
the other. It is rather the assertion of sound middle class morality
against two opposite yet somewhat allied forms of social immorality--the
strength that exaggerates its claims, and the weakness that claims all the
privileges of strength.
We are useful too as conserving certain valuable ideas. When I mention the
idea of the right of private property, I expect to be laughed at by a
large class of enthusiasts. Yet all of civilization has been built up on
the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. Without this idea there is not
the slightest inducement to persistent individual effort nor possibility
of progress for the individual or for the race. The fruitful diversities,
the germinative inequalities between men all depend on this right. And
today the right to one's own is doubly under attack from the violence of
laboring men, and the guile of those in positions of financial trust. The
strikers who offer as an argument the burning of a mine or wrecking of a
mill, and the directors who manipulate corporation accounts to pay
unearned dividends, are both undermining the right of property. Against
such counsels of force and fraud, the representatives of the common sense
and funded wisdom of mankind are the middling rich. It is an unromantic
service--doubtless breaking other people's windows or scaling their bank
accounts is much more thrilling--it is a public service obviously tinged
with self-interest, but none the less a public service of high and timely
importance. The business of keeping the sanity of the world intact as
against the wilder expressions of social discontent, and the uglier
expressions of personal envy and greed, may seem to lack zest and
originality today. History may well take a different view of the matter.
It would not be surprising to find a posthumous aureole of idealism
conferred upon those who amid the trumpeting of money market messiahs, and
the braying of self-appointed remodellers of the race, simply stood
quietly on their own inherited rights and principles.
Such are some not wholly minor uses for the middling rich. Should they be
abolished, many of the pleasanter facts and appearances of the world would
disappear with them. The other day I whisked in one of their motor cars
through miles of green Philadelphia suburbs dappled with pink magnolia
trees and white fruit blossoms--everywhere charming houses, velvety lawns,
tidy gardens. The establishing of a little paradise like that is of course
a selfish enterprise--a mere meeting of the push and foresight of real
estate operators with the thrift and sentiment of householders, yet it is
an advantage inevitably shared, a benefit to the entire community, an
example in reasonable working, living, and playing.
On the side of play we should especially miss these harmless rich. The
sleek horses on a thousand bridle paths and meadows are theirs, the
smaller winged craft that still protest against the pollution of the sea
by the reek of coal and the stench of gasoline; of their furnishing are
the graceful and widely shared spectacles not only of the minor yacht
racing but of the field sports generally. They constitute our militia. The
survival in the world of such gentler accomplishments as fencing,
canoeing, and exploration rests with the middling rich. They write our
books and plays, compose our music, paint our pictures, carve our statues.
The pleasanter unconscious pageantry of our life is conducted by their
sons and daughters. To be nice, to indulge in nice occupations, to express
happiness--this is not even today a reproach to any one. Indeed if any
approach to the dreamed socialized state ever be made, it will come less
through regimentation than through imitation of those persons of middle
condition who have managed to be reasonably faithful in their duties, and
moderate in their pleasures. To keep a clean mind in a clean body is the
prerogative of no class, but the lapses from this standard are
unquestionably more frequent among the poor and the very rich.
It is instructive in this regard to compare with the newspapers that serve
the middling rich, those that address the poor, and those that are owned
in the interest of well understood capitalistic interests. The extremes of
yellow journalism and of avowedly capitalistic journalism, meet in a
preference for salacious or merely shocking news, and in a predilection
for blatant, sophistical, or merely nugatory and time-serving editorial
expressions. Between the two really allied types of newspapers are a few
which exercise a decent censorship over questionable news, and habitually
indulge in the luxury of sincere editorial opinion. There are some
exceptions to the rule. In our own day we have seen a proletarian paper
become a magnificent editorial organ, while somewhat illogically
maintaining a random and sensational policy in its news columns. But
generally the distinction is unmistakable. Imagine the plight of New York
journalism if four papers, which I need not mention, ceased publication.
It would mean a distinct and immediate cheapening of the mentality of the
city. Then observe on any train who are reading these papers. It is plain
enough what class among us makes decent journalism possible.
Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something for the
reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much reduced, and will be
farther, the process being limited simply by the degree to which the poor
will educate and discipline themselves. We shall never wholly do away with
bad luck, bad inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some
poverty we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The
fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a world
where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where poverty shall
be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of the world, and of the
number of the virtually rich, will never be attained by the puerile method
of expropriating the present holders of wealth. That would produce more
poor people beyond doubt--but its effect in enriching the present poor
would be inappreciable. You cannot change a man's character and capacity
simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale expropriations
and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the
same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered
has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he
was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not
interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of
dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as its immorality.
This essentially personal character of wealth must affect the views of
those who would attack what are called the inordinate fortunes. I hold no
brief for or against the multi-millionaire. In many cases I believe his
wealth is as personal, assimilated and legitimate as is the average
moderate fortune. In many cases too, I know that such gigantic wealth is
in fact the product of unfair craft and favoritism, is to that extent
unassimilated and illegitimate. Yet admitting the worst of great fortunes,
I think a prudent and fair minded man would hesitate before a general
programme of expropriation. He would consider that in many cases the
common weal needs such services as very wealthy people render, he would
reflect on the practical benefits to the world, of the benevolent
enterprises for education, research, invention, hygiene, medicine, which
are founded and supported by great wealth. In our time The Rockefeller
Institute will have stamped out that slow plague of the south, the hook
worm. To the obvious retort that the government ought to do this sort of
thing, the reply is equally obvious, that historically governments have
not done this sort of thing until enlightened private enterprise has shown
the way. Our prudent observer of mankind in general, and of the very rich
in particular, would again reflect that, granting much of the socialist
indictment of capital as illgained, common sense requires a statute of
limitations. At a certain point restitution makes more trouble than the
possession of illegitimate wealth. Debts, interest, and grudges cannot be
indefinitely accumulated and extended. It is the entire disregard of this
simple and generally admitted principle that has marred the socialist
propaganda from the first. From the point of view of fomenting hatred
between classes, to make every workingman regard himself as the residuary
legatee of all the grievances of all workingmen, at all times, may be
clever tactics, it is not a good way of making the workingman see clearly
what his actual grievance and expectancy of redress are in his own day and
time.
With increasingly heavy income and inheritance taxes, the very rich will
have to reckon. Yet the multi-millionaire's evident utility as the milch
cow of the state, will cause statesmen, even of the anti-capitalistic
stamp, to waver at the point where the cow threatens to dry up from
over-milking. If the case, then, for utterly despoiling the harmful rich,
is by no means clear, the prospect for the harmless rich may be regarded
as fairly favorable. For the moment, caught between the headiness of
working folk, the din of doctrinaires, and the wiles of corporate
activity, the lot of the middling rich is not the most happy imaginable.
But they seem better able to weather these flurries than the windy,
cloud-compelling divinities of the hour. From the survival of the middling
rich, the future common weal will be none the worse, and it may even be
better.