124 An American Fruit-Farm 



riches, of employee to employer; of day laborer 

 to owner of the plant, is a familiar tradition; infre- 

 quent in fact, and more familiar in the past than 

 it can be in the future. Fundamentally it is a 

 question of natural resources. So long as there 

 remain undeveloped resources, of magnitude, in 

 America, such as was the entire continent for 

 generations, the transition from poverty to riches, 

 conspicuous in the iron and steel, the lumber, the 

 copper, the coal, lead, and oil interests in past 

 times, may confidently be expected. The chances 

 diminish in geometrical proportion as population 

 increases. This is the history of all older countries. 

 All men in America believe, or profess to believe, 

 that they are bom free and equal, but no man 

 believes that he was bom to remain a mere, un- 

 skilled laborer. Granting full scope to the doctrine 

 of equality, we know by observation, and doubtless 

 by experience, that all men are not born to be 

 employers of labor. In other words, it does not 

 appear that all men in America are bom, industri- 

 ally considered, very differently than are all men 

 in other civilized lands. But it does appear, in 

 every country, more and more as time passes, that 

 the station in which a man is born is the station 

 in which he will live and die. This is inevitable. 

 All the phenomenal rise of captains of industry, 

 multi-millionaires, favorites of fortune and of 

 Congress, characterize this our earlier national 

 history, — if the word national can be so applied. 

 The trend, the world over, is toward fixidity of 



