PROBLEMS OF PROPERTY. 335 



a nation enjoying universal suffrage, nor were Utopias ever before 

 'preached to men who might practically attempt their establishment. 

 The wide diffusion of popular knowledge through the schools, the 

 press, and the platform, in these latter days, has made the discussion 

 of such questions as that before us very general and very earnest. 

 Workingmen's newspapers of wide circulation debate the pros and 

 cons of the land and other problems fearlessly and with much good 

 sense. The extension of the suffrage and the progress of political re- 

 form have taken such subjects out of the small circle where only 

 speculative thinkers used to discuss them, and brought them home to 

 the great masses of the working population, into whose hands the 

 reins of legislation must more and more directly come. Trades-unions 

 have made workmen sensible of the power of union and organization, 

 and the benefits they have derived from their combinations have led to 

 a wide-spread capacity for acting in concert scarcely known among 

 them until this generation. 



While in England and on the Continent of Europe property is much 

 more unequally held than in America, it is evident that there are forces 

 at work in the New World which are creating problems similar to 

 those in the Old. Competent observers declare that wealth is passing 

 more and more into the hands of the wealthy, the manners of the 

 wealthy class are improving they are gradually becoming an aristoc- 

 racy in all but name ; and, as the societies of the older cities become 

 more and more cultivated, I think we may see a large proportion of 

 wealthy families retaining their possessions for generations as they do 

 abroad. It used to be thought that the sons or grandsons of rich 

 Americans could be relied upon to give back to the community their 

 inherited wealth through demoralization and incompetence ; but that 

 reliance is proved baseless in a noteworthy proportion of cases in New 

 York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Fifty years ago the wealthiest man 

 in America had a fortune of ten millions, let us say ; now, the wealth- 

 iest citizen of the United States has a fortune estimated at from' ten 

 to fifteen times as much ; and the proportionate increase in the extent 

 of fortunes of the second and third magnitude has been similar. Has 

 the wealth of the average citizen increased in anything like this de- 

 gree ? And such democratic social intercourse as we possess has its 

 dangers the intermingling in society in this country of people com- 

 paratively poor with those comparatively rich implants in those of 

 restricted incomes a desire to live expensively, which would less often 

 be the Case were class lines as distinctly drawn here as they are across 

 the Atlantic. 



Into the question of the social advantages to a community of a very 

 wealthy and leisured class I do not enter, but in passing would note 

 that perhaps the worthiness and manliness, as a rule, of the British 

 aristocracy have done very much toward their privileges being re- 

 spected in these times of radicalism. And contrariwise, the sharpest 



