ribute toward making the road
safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he
should give them what they earn, instead of taking it
himself?
My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man
dies his children shall not inherit wealth.
Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W.
Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago _Tribune_, is a conservative, opposed
to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting
everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that
if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the _Tribune_
certainly will not support him.
THE RICH MAN IS NOW THE UNDER DOG.
If the Millionaire Does Not Give, He is
"Stingy;" if He Does Give, He
is Called a "Briber."
Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the distinguished Chicago rabbi, says that "charity,
as the word is known to-day, is only a bribe of moneyed men to make a
community forget the wrongs heaped upon it." The New York _Globe_ catches
at the text, and brings out the fact that present-day critics are leaving
the rich no refuge at all. The rich man is the common target.
Heretofore the poor man has had the world's sympathy as the
under dog. Now he is becoming supercanine and the rich man
subcanine. Does the rich man not give? He is stingy. Does he
give? He is a briber--passes from negative to positive
crime.
If he would get rid of superfluous wealth his only chance is
to buy edifices and burn them down uninsured. Even then he
might be arrested for arson and accused of maliciously
overworking the poor firemen; or hygienists would say he was
dirtying the air with smoke, and thus murdering those
compelled to breathe it.
Instead of settlements for the neglected poor--such
institutions as grew up in East London after Sir Walter
Besant wrote "All Sorts and Conditions of Men"--there should
be settlements for the neglected rich.
As things are now they have no chance--their best is
necessarily a worst. Victims of society, equally condemned
whether they do or don't do, no option seems open but to
journey to the extreme edge of space and jump off into
nothingness.
A favorite doctrine of Calvinistic New England was that a
man was not saved unless entirely and absolutely willing to
be damned for the glory of God; with a similar inexorable
logic our n
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