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Show THE AMASSING OF WEALTH. Hon. Lyman J Gage, former Secretary Secre-tary of the Treasury of tho United States, and now president of a trust company in New York, made a tulk the other day'to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, young men's Bible clans, celebrated not for any effort or quality in the members mem-bers composing it, but becauso Rockefeller Rocke-feller is its teacher. As was appropriate, Mr. Gago's talk was In the nature of an apology for the amassing of money. This In itself put the speaker on the defensive, and his defense was neither yery go"od nor very cbmprehenslve. Ho assumed too much, first, in that as a general ( proposition tno man who amasses great wealth docs not take tho money from somo ono elso. But as a general proposition that 13 precisely what ho does do. S The chief exception to tho rule is whero a man makes hi3 money in mines. Tho man whoso wealth comes out of a mine robs no one; no ono J3 tho poorer for his wealth, but on tho contrary every onewlthin tho sphero of his operations Is distinctly and positively posi-tively better off becauso he has mado his money. The truth of this is manifest mani-fest every day throughout tho wholo mining regions of tho mountain country. coun-try. On the other hand, the man who makes his money in the stock markets of Wall street, makes It byr "shearing the lambs." The man who makes it in railway manipulations, does so by exacting ex-acting tribute on a capitalization double dou-ble to quadruple tho sum ho hns Invested, In-vested, and this is the general rule In all transportation and Industrial enterprises. enter-prises. Tho Shipbuilding Combine, whose methods were so scandalous, and so fully exposed In court, attempted to quadruple what had already been quadrupled, quad-rupled, and sunk Into tho mire under tho load. Tho Standard Oil Company, as has been so recently established, grasped Its monopolistic position, whero it fleeces tho public at will, by the most scandalous scan-dalous and conscienceless practices; and so severe was the showing- that it has recently put forth a defenso which seems to bo very much llko tho reckless reck-less plea often heard, that "If I didn't do it, somebody elso would." This Stnndard Oil cxposuro ought to bo of special Interest to Mr. Rockefeller's class. 1 In view of the developments In that monopolistic concern, Mr. Gago's Illustration Illus-tration of tho man who makes two blades of grass gTow where only one grew before, and therefore was a public pub-lic benefactor, entitled to the reward of one-fourth of his labors when tho community com-munity gets three-fourths, was singularly sin-gularly Inept When this double growing of grass in one's own yard involves in-volves tho destruciion of all, the grass In his neighbor's yards, reserving to himself the monopoly of grass growing, tho old motto takes on a new and decidedly de-cidedly sinister meaning. 3ux. Gage's text was tho declaration pf a clergyman that no man can acquire ac-quire a million dollars in a lifetime without robbing somebody. That re mark, of course, had no application to the man who gets his million In mines. It meant tho scraping together of a million dollars In tho methods usually employed by money brokers, promotion sharks, and organizers of combinations in which vast values aro counted on little lit-tle real investment. And in that sense It Is perfectly truo, as exemplified by the lives of most of thoso who figure as tho country's millionaires. Mr. Gage,- however, thinks that this idea Is based on the proposition that the amount of wealth Is fixed, and that Its fallacy Is proved by the fact that wealth is not a fixed quantity, but is being constantly increased; "new wealth Is beipg produced all tho time." That is of course true: but tho success of the grasping monopolist Is, not de-" pendent upon tho Increase of wealth; nor Is that of ho combiner of establishments estab-lishments or corporations who issues Immenso blocks of stock or fictitious values; nor that of the man who by corrupt manipulation gets advantages for himself, either through legislation or through private agreements with corporations which are necessary to hl3 operations. Nor does It appear why the new wealth should all or chiefly go Into "the channels that are already plentifully supplied. It is hardly a Eatisfactory defense of this tremendous massing of wealth to say that It is new, and does not come out of the general hoard already al-ready collected. It is especially unsatisfactory unsat-isfactory to urgo this plea before a class whose teacher represents not only a conspicuous instance to the contrary of the proposition, but the most complete com-plete and rapacious instance known In ,the country, of preying upon tho wealth that may be aald to be fixed, and without with-out the slightest reference to any now wealth that may be produced save to draw it within tho grasp of tho tentacles ten-tacles whiah already are so firmly flx.ed upon the helpless public. |