tions, let us hold fast to what is just "though the heavens fall," for in the maintenance of justice only can there be abiding government and permanent social prosperity. As this republic could not exist half slave and half free, so it cannot exist with a race of wealth aristocrats ruling a race of serfs. With justice at the foundation and progress under just laws, our government may survive; but whenever an unjust institution is permitted in society and allowed to develop, it terminates in blood and destruction. The seeds of evil deposited by one generation of men ripen into Dead Sea fruit to be gathered by their successors. Humanity is now about to gather one of these bitter harvests for which the seeds were planted a thousand years ago. What will that harvest be? 6 CHAPTER VI. THE ROOTS OF THE UPAS TREE. "That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor rights in it; no authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or burden its use to another, which comes to it in their own right, and by the same Divine beneficence; that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeeding one by its laws or contracts, these deriving their obligation from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and contracts—these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation cau make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms, also, pregnant with salutary consequences. The laws of civil society, indeed, for the encouragement of industry, give the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most civilized countries permit him to give it by testament to whom he pleases. And it is also found more convenient to suffer the laws to stand on our implied assent as if positively re-enacted, until the existing majority repeals them; but this does not lessen the right of that majority to repeal whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it. Habit alone confounds civil practice with natural right.” -THOMAS JEfferson. In order to discuss the social problem of wealth-conditions on a plane that will free it from the charge of sentimentality, and reduce it to the simplest possible form of human rights, we will discard from consideration all ideas of charity, benevolence, religion, or any other feeling that might call down mercy for the poor man. All that will be demanded for him is justice and fair opportunities in the contest. Equality of wealth is not claimed for any man in these pages, but equality of opportunity is surely justice to which he is entitled. Let us now see whether in the race of life, he runs in a fair field with no favors granted to other men. Under just laws the evil results of wealth concentration by the competitive system of modern social life would not become very serious or dangerous were those conditions not fixed, transferred, and perpetuated by the lapse of time and the changes in population. If at any period of the earth's history, and in any country, we place any number of men at work with free access to the advantages of earth as a home, they will labor in various ways, with different habits and degrees of intelligence and industry. In the accumulation of wealth and the means of comfort, some will naturally and justly achieve a greater prosperity than others. This statement of an evident truth constitutes the standard argument of those who oppose or ridicule any attack on the injustice of existing wealth-distribution. A frank admission of this truth is. thus stated, for this book is not written to excite ignorant prejudice, but to stimulate thought and discussion. When men commence life with equal opportunities and contest for success, some will inevitably and justly-so far as justice can be obtained under competition-become richer than others. In the average existence of one generation, perhaps thirty-five years, or even in twice that period, the differences in wealth-accumulation will not ordinarily become oppressive or dangerous and destructive to government, for absolute equality of wealth is not necessary to an equitable condition under competition, and not really desirable even if it were possible. single generation the wealthy people do not become idle and profligate, nor the poor such miserable rats of servile poverty as now exist in the slums of every city. The richest man will still remain a worker, and the poorest man will not have prepared a bomb with which to annihilate the other. If, then, a single generation could exist under competitive principles without necessary injustice, and if every other generation, under the same conditions, could live out a fair competition, and, finally, if In a after the lapse of many generations every country in the world has arrived at a condition of such frightful and evident injustice that men are being driven to riot and murder and rebellion on account of it, the essential wrong at the foundation must exist in the links which connect one generation with the next; for if injustice does not exist in the competition of any generation separately wherein all the individuals possess equal opportunities, it must exist in whatever connects those generations, by which unfairness enters at the beginning of every new contest. We will search, therefore, in the laws of successions for the principles upon which they are based, and examine the methods by which the wealth accumulated by one generation is transferred to the next. It is scarcely conceivable that any intelligent person, unbiased by motives of personal loss or gain, after reflecting on the nature of our present laws of succession, can doubt that they embody the unfairness which is the principal cause of the dangerous wealth-conditions that are within our power to modify by legislation, and that the essential wrong of an aristocracy, domineering over an humbler and greater body of apparently equally deserving people, is to be found in the unjust principle, which has usually received the sanction of civilized society in all its recorded history, by which the ancestor who has accumulated wealth names his successor and delivers his possessions to one or a few survivors, independently of any efforts which the latter may or may not have made in the acquisition of the property which they receive by his bequest. Transmitted in this way, there is a tendency for the original fortune to increase as an aggregate within the family limits, and to become fixed as a family possession; for, if the heirs, who are usually the direct descendants, inherit, as they naturally do, the money-making instincts or talents of the ancestor, the family estate increases in value from generation to generation, gaining volume like a snowball as it is pushed forward. Many fortunes, it is true, have been dissipated by spendthrift heirs, and by division under bequests; but immediate or even rapid distribution is not the natural and usual tendency, for the accumulating ancestor almost invariably feels a pride in his fortune and desires to leave it in a body if possible, so that it may be a monument to his superior abilities; and the natural laws of heredity often carry money-making and money-saving instincts down through many generations in one family. The families of the Rothschilds and the Astors are notable instances of this kind, and the fact that large fortunes are transmitted from generation to generation in every civilized country, although many fortunes are dissipated, is proof of the tendency of wealth to fossilize without further comment. The inequitable and wasteful distribution of wealth by profligate heirs is almost universally regarded as beneficial to society. People would rather see a great fortune broken up by wasteful heirs than to see it perpetuated; but so inconsistent is average human nature of the unreflective sort, that many of those who approve this distribution, will denounce methods that are far more equitable and beneficial than the extravagance and vicious habits of spendthrift heirs. In the law of successions lies the root of the wealth evil. Where else can it be? If the conditions of natural competition-not modern competition-are just, as nearly every one believes, there is nothing unfair in the conditions of the struggle till competitors drop out of the contest by death, and others are substituted by birth and inheritance; yet in spite of this assumed fairness every country in the world eventually reaches the same dis |