One of the careless outcries of dissatisfied persons is that the “rich
are growing richer and the poor poorer.” This is half true. The rich
are growing richer—and so, too, are the poor. The wealth of the world
has been enormously increased, and all classes have profited by it.
Even paupers fare better at public expense than they did fifty years
ago. Steam has multiplied the world’s wealth. The increase is most
conspicuous in the bank accounts of the rich. But the poor live in
better houses, have better food and clothing, and get a good many things
once considered luxuries. Doubtless some who cry “the poor are growing
poorer,” have an honest fear that the tendency of things is to crush down
into bitter poverty all but the few rich. They see the growth of large
fortunes, but they fail to see the greater growth of general wealth, nor
do they stop to figure out the problem. For example: Suppose Vanderbilt
has $150,000,000. Then suppose it divided among 50,000,000 of people.
We should get just _three dollars apiece_! Suppose that the very rich
of the country are equal in wealth to twenty Vanderbilts—a very large
estimate. Then, their united wealth, if distributed, would give us only
_sixty dollars apiece_! That is the most we could get out of dividing up
the big piles of wealth. Any one sees that it would not pay to divide.
The rich have not a great deal of our money in their pockets—if they
have any. For, an honest inquiry will show that the general average of
wealth, and of all that wealth brings to us, is higher by a much larger
proportion than that sixty dollars apiece represents. The worst view we
can possibly take of it is that we have paid sixty dollars apiece, out of
a vast increase in wealth, to men who have managed great enterprises that
have enriched us all. _Perhaps_ these men have taken it all for nothing.
Nobody believes it; but suppose they have. Then we have still obtained
a great gain at small cost. We get, on the average, twice as much for
our labor as people did fifty years ago. We live in more comfort than
people used to do. We are not growing poorer. We raise here no question
of monopolies. Our point now is that the poor are not growing poorer, but
richer—that there is no such tendency at work in modern society as the
one honestly feared by many—this piling up of all wealth in few hands.
Steam is not an aristocrat, but a plain Republican who impartially helps
us all when we help ourselves.