174 PElilLS. — WEALTH. 



king must not, after two or four years, return his x^ower 

 to the people; he has a hfe tenure of office, provided 

 only his grip upon his golden scepter be strong. Less 

 than than thirty years ago, Emerson wrote for our 

 wonder: "Some English private fortunes reach, and 

 some exceed, a million dollars a year." At least one 

 American has had an income of $1,000,000 a month; and 

 others follow hard after him. A writer in The Formm ^ 

 gives a list of seventy names of persons in the United 

 States, representing an aggregate wealth of $2,700,000,- 

 000, or an average of $37,500,000 each. "It would be 

 easy," he says, "for any specialh' well-informed person 

 to make up a list of one hundred persons averaging $25,- 

 000,000 each, in addition to ten averaging $100,000,000 

 each. No such list of concentrated wealth could be 

 given in any other country in the world." 



Sui:)erfiuity on the one hand, and dire want on the 

 other — the millionaire and the tramp— are the comple- 

 ment each of the other. The classes from which we 

 have most to fear are the two extremes of society — the 

 dangerously rich and the dangerously poor; and the 

 former are much more to be feared than the latter. 

 Said Dr. Howard Crosby: "The danger which 

 threatens the uprooting of society, the demolition of 

 civil institutions, the destruction of liberty, and the 

 desolation of all, is that which comes from the rich and 

 poAverful classes in the community. " ^ " The great estates 

 of Rome, in the time of the Caesars, and of France in 

 the time of the Bourbons, rivaled those of the United 

 States to-day ; but both nations were on their way to the 

 frenzy of revolution, not in spite of their wealth, but, 

 in some true sense, because of it." ^ We have seen, in 

 the preceding chapter, that mechanical invention tends 

 to create operative and capitalist classes, and render 

 them hereditary. It is the tendency of our civilization 

 to destroy the easy gradation from poor to rich which 



1 Mr. Thomas G. Shearman, in Forum for November, 1889. 



2 Xorth American Review, April, 1883, p. 346. 



3 Editorial in Christian Union. October 16, 1881, 



