THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF WEALTH. 831 



discoveries and inventions have to pass througli a period of in- 

 cubation, as recently electric lighting and the transmission of 

 force by electricity, and now the division and dispersion of mo- 

 tive force into small shops, experiments in photography of colors, 

 etc. Numerous costly efforts are necessary in seeking advance 

 in such matters which we see to be possible and even near, but 

 which are still far from the practicable period. Outside of the 

 professional and technical ranks the persons who can make these 

 experiments are not of the class who are simply at ease. At most 

 they can only devote insignificant and insufficient sums to them. 

 Such persons may be set to their work and kept at it by the pri- 

 vate aid of the really wealthy, who are not asked to risk a frac- 

 tion of their capital, bnt only a small portion of their surplus 

 income, after all its other applications have been provided for. 

 Wealth is thus put in the way of fulfilling its social function of 

 assisting progress ; and much more is accomplished by it in this 

 way than the multitude think. A similar field of usefulness is 

 found in giving assistance to agricultural experimentation. The 

 great English lords, according to Thorold Rogers in his Econom- 

 ical Interpretation of History, achieved much in this direction in 

 the seventeenth century ; and Arthur Young has cited the cases 

 of numerous gentlemen and industrial proprietors in France who 

 improved their opportunities of thus doing good. A large estate 

 is a free school, a field of experiments in novelties from which the 

 neighboring small property derives a full share of benefit. The 

 trial of new cultivations, of selected seed, of improved implements, 

 of methods suggested by science, is the task of the opulent large 

 proprietor or of the rich manufacturer or merchant spending his 

 vacation or his leisure on his country estate. So these large pro- 

 prietors have a mission to perform in the choice of good breeders 

 for reproduction or selection, and in the improvement of vege- 

 table species. 



A second social function of wealth is found in enterprises 

 requiring patronage and remunerative philanthropy. The term 

 " remunerative philanthropy " may have an odd sound to some 

 persons. It is, however, true that rich men render great social 

 services by the performance of the kind of work which we have 

 designated thus. A portion of the revenue of the wealthy might 

 well be devoted to enterprises of general and public utility, which 

 would also, if well directed, produce a modest but respectable 

 remuneration. There are a number of kinds of businesses ca- 

 pable of returning a small profit, but in which the chances of 

 gain, though not absent, are too limited to attract private specu- 

 lators, careful only of their personal interest, which might be 

 undertaken by wealthy men satisfied to put out a part of their 

 revenues for low interest. An investigation made about fifteen 



