THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 723 



Notwithstanding the interesting nature of these questions, they are 

 seldom discussed, and Mr. Sidgwick is almost alone in a systematic 

 examination of the third topic. Keeping in mind that no age has 

 seen such vast accumulations of private wealth as the present, we take 

 up the questions in order : 



I. At first sight it is not clear why some few men apparently not 

 much distinguished from the rest should gain such disproportionate 

 rewards in wealth and power. Nearly all our great millionaires began 

 as poor men, and in a few years they are possessed of incomes up 

 among the millions. Many find this plainly unjust, and a condemna- 

 tion of our entire economic system. Even though the laborer has 

 also gained both in money-wages and in their purchasing power, as 

 well as in decreased hours of labor, this is not sufficient ; his share 

 in the increase is unfair.* The capitalist gets an increasing share of 

 the produce, and grinds the faces of the poor. 



It might dampen the ardor of these reformers to reflect on the well- 

 known fact that the average remuneration of capital in this country is 

 not more than five per cent, as we may see in the fact that money can 

 be borrowed on unquestioned security for much less. Here, however, 

 we have to account for the extraordinary cases. There is nothing par- 

 ticularly difficult about it. As in armies we find man set over man 

 and grade over grade, despite apparent equality, so in an age of com- 

 mercial militancy, of universal competition and rapid transition, we 

 find that a similar inequality is created. 



For though industrialism is in many ways to be sharply contrasted 

 to militancy, they agree in this that in each there is a struggle for 

 existence. And when by improvement in the means of competition 

 this struggle becomes more constant and severe, and division of labor 

 arises through the necessity of each to rely on his special power, there 

 arises the same need of management and direction, and the same high 

 reward is necessarily paid for it. Thus, the democratic civilization 

 of our early history, whose ideal was that every citizen should own at 

 least " forty acres and a mule," has given way to the modern militant 

 industrial system. The application of steam to transportation led to 

 universal competition, in which the strong waxed stronger and the weak 

 became still weaker, at least relatively, or else sought pastures new. 

 Man was set against man, town against town, and State against State ; 

 for States are competitors for the hire and business of the great world 

 as men are competitors for the service of employers or in commerce 

 for the service of their communities.! The men and towns and coun- 



* Mr. Gladden, in " The Century " for March, 1886, p. T39. This mistake, which Mr. 

 Gladden apparently makes his own, plainly springs from overlooking the fact that the 

 share of labor in the produce is not simply the wages of employes directly in view, but 

 the wages of all those, however distant, who contribute to it. The capitalist's expenses 

 are the remuneration of labor. 



f Socialistic writers regard thi3 state of things with horror. It is curious to note, 



