7 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tries best prepared for the new conditions have taken the lead and 

 reaped the reward. The nations best qualified by habits of labor and 

 enterprise for this vast competition were England and the United 

 States. Among cities New York and Chicago have outstripped Nor- 

 folk and New Orleans. Among individuals certain industrial princes 

 have been evolved, and these are our millionaires. On the face of the 

 matter it is not apparent why Turkey or Spain has not as much claim 

 on the increased wealth of the world, so large a proportion of which 

 has been gained by the United States, as an ordinary citizen has on 

 the profits which Mr. Gould derives from his telegraph system. If 

 there were forty or fifty such countries situated near each other and 

 capable of combining, very likely they would resolve that we had 

 more than we ought to have, and compel us to disgorge our ill-gotten 

 gains. 



It is now apparent that the position to be here taken is that in 

 the normal and usual case wealth is gained by doing a corresponding 

 share of the world's work ; and it may further be said that the amount 

 of individual gain is no adequate measure of the public gain. A 

 vague idea prevails that the great millionaires have gained their 

 wealth through some mysterious and illegitimate trickery.* As very 

 few are aware of the beneficial operation of speculation, which is really 

 an insurance to the producer against undue fluctuation in the price of 

 the product, operations in Wall Street lend some support to this idea. 

 Then, too, the ordinary formula for profits given in books on political 

 economy (profit = wages of superintendence + interest + recompense 

 for risk) hardly aids us in understanding American fortune-getting as 

 a normal process. This formula really means that profits have a tend- 

 ency to fall or rise to the level stated. With actual profit, particularly 

 when realized in a new commercial age, it has very little to do. The 

 fact is that profit is based on the value of the service done the public, 

 in the public estimation. For particular cases a more accurate formula 

 is, profit equals the total money value of the service rendered, less ex- 

 penses and the public profit therein. In small business enterprises the 

 flow of capital into very profitable investments is very rapid, at least 

 in all except new communities. But it has not been so with large en- 

 terprises. The immobility and mismanagement of capital have been 

 so great that a high premium has been put upon unusual foresight and 

 sagacity during the advent of the age of railways. The history of 

 the Western Union Telegraph Company, and of the fortune of the first 

 Cornelius Vanderbilt, furnish excellent illustrations : we choose the 

 latter. 



however, the complacency with which they regard displays of brute force, either under 

 the form of war or riot, or in the shape of a law backed by the superior force of society. 

 * The Rev. Mr. Abbott shows this feeling in his article in " The Century " for Xovem 

 ber, 1885, where he assumes that no man's service can be worth more than a million a 

 year to the public. 



