AMERICAN FORTUNES NOT LARGE, CONSIDERING
A country of such resources could not be developed as America
has been without great fortunes resulting. Inequality of
results in every field of human endeavor, except the
acquisition of property, is welcomed and approved by everyone.
I am not surprised at the fortunes that have been made in this country.
On the contrary, even greater fortunes might have been reasonably
expected. As I look over the matchless resources of America, the
surface of which as yet has been only scratched, and the matchless
resourcefulness of our people, I marvel that even greater accumulations
have not been made. I have been frequently surprised that I did not
make more myself. But I can account for it, so far as I am concerned. I
heard of a man who said he could write as good poetry as Shakespeare,
“if he had a mind to.” His friends assured him he had discovered his
handicap. That was my difficulty. I had the disposition, and I have had
the opportunity. As I look back over the years of my mature life I
recognize that I have failed to heed opportunities where I might have
made more money than any man has made. But I did not have the vision; I
did not have the courage; I did not have the “mind to.”
I can construct a highway so the worst old scrub of a horse, with his
mane and tail full of cockleburrs, can keep up with a thoroughbred.
Yes, I can. But the mud must needs be very deep and quite thick. When
the mud is sufficiently heavy, one horse can keep up with another. But
when the track is improved, the horse with aptitude for speed will soon
distance the old cockleburred scrub, who would, if he could talk, very
likely insist there is something wrong with our civilization, and
become a socialist.
We all demand good roads, though we all know that if we have good roads
we will have to take someone’s dust. The only way, my friend, to
protect yourself from the other man’s dust is to have the roads so bad
he cannot pass you.
A PARABLE
During the free silver campaign of 1896, a man with a full unkempt
beard and shaggy hair, after several times interrupting the speaker,
finally asked in squeaky voice: “Mr. Speaker, how do you account for
the unequal distribution of wealth?” The answer came with promptness.
“How do you account for the unequal distribution of whiskers?” When the
audience had quieted down, the speaker might have said: “My friend, I
did not make that remark to cause merriment at your expense. I made it
to illustrate a great truth. I was born with equal opportunity and
equal aptitude for whiskers with yourself. But I have dissipated mine.
Whenever I have found myself in possession of any perceptible amount of
whiskers, I have dissipated them. Had I conserved my whiskers, as you
evidently have, I, too, would be a millionaire in whiskers.”
Tell your boys, and the boys you meet, that if ever they become
millionaires in dollars as in whiskers, the chances are it will be
because they conserve. John J. Blair, the pioneer railroad builder west
of the Mississippi River, once told Senator Allison that the wife of
Commodore Vanderbilt had many times cooked for him a five o’clock
breakfast, for which she charged twenty cents. The seed from which all
great fortunes have been grown was hand picked.
In the war between the states more than a million men enlisted on
either side, and at the end of four and one-half years there were fifty
or one hundred multi-millionaires in military achievement and military
glory and ten thousand in unmarked graves. Socialists do not object to
these inequalities. While they seem to welcome millionaires in art, in
music, and in athletics they all point to millionaires in business as
an unanswerable indictment of America’s political system. They rejoice
that it can produce an Edison, but mourn that it can also produce a
Rockefeller. Yet the success of these two wizards is traceable alike to
extraordinary aptitude in their respective fields of achievement, plus
extraordinary application. Neither of these men ever robbed me of a
penny. On the contrary each has contributed to my comfort, thus adding
to the worth of living, and each has cheapened for me the cost of high
living. But for Mr. Edison, or someone of a different name to do what
he has done, I would be deprived of electric light and many other
comforts. But for Mr. Rockefeller, or some one of a different name to
do what Mr. Rockefeller has done, every owner of an oil well would be
pumping his product into barrels in the olden way, hauling it to town
and selling on a manipulated market, while I would be deprived of a
hundred by-products of petroleum, be still paying twenty-five cents per
gallon for poor kerosene, and there would be no such thing known in all
the world as gasoline.