78 PETER S. GROSSCUP 



are thus consolidated, as many well informed men now think 

 probable, the so-called trusts will have absorbed nearly one 

 sixth of all the wealth, of all kinds, in the United States. 

 Nothing in history, outside the rise of the feudal system, has 

 left so striking a change in what may be called the personnel 

 of ownership. As a mere right to hold and control, ownership 

 remains, of course, unchanged, but if the process of the last 

 few years goes on unchanged the universality of ownership 

 that characterized our past — an ownership of our industries 

 widely spread among the people — will be all but lost. 



Accurate statistics show that the former owners of the 

 industries now consolidated have put their mone} r , or the bulk 

 of it, in the banks ; the workman declines to invest his surplus 

 wages; and with them, also standing aloof, is the ordinary 

 man, possessing ordinary means. It is certain that, as never 

 before in our history, there are several millions of men and 

 women brought up in the industrial trades who are now with- 

 out proprietary interest in the trades they follow. No less 

 a man than Webster said that the freest of governments will 

 not long be acceptable if the tendency of the laws be to create 

 a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, rendering 

 the majority of the population dependent. If this be truth, 

 it has come about that the same years that brought us riches 

 and greatness as a nation have brought with them an internal 

 disorder, which, if allowed to go on, will endanger the stability 

 of the government itself. 



The men and women who, two generations ago, came 

 over the Alleghanies into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys; 

 the children of these, who, abiding with their fathers until 

 wild nature had been tamed, faced wild nature again on the 

 trans-Missouri plains; our earliest forefathers, who threw 

 themselves on the ocean to be cast up in the wilderness; the 

 men and women, who every year have braved something, to 

 gain something they might call their own; these, and these 

 alone, are the true types on which our institutions thus far 

 have found secure foundation. It was not civil and religious 

 liberty alone these fathers sought. The spirit of adventure 

 does not, alone, account for the courage of their children. 

 They sought, one and all, opportunity as well; the indcpend- 



