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Page 25
THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF PROPERTY
I
It is Hawthorne, I think, who tells us that when he was a boy he used once
in a while to go down to the wharves in Salem, and lay his hand on the
rail of some great East India merchantman, redolent of spices, and thus
bring himself in actual touch with the mysterious orient. But there is
nothing strange in this: almost anything that we can feel or see may start
the flight of fancy, and open to us prophetic visions. This is even true
of such dry symbols as figures, for our journalists would never publish
statistics as they do, unless they knew that their readers liked to see
them. Travellers from other parts of the world have often laughed at our
fondness for revelling in the marvellous accounts of our material
dimensions, but they should remember that people who do not have a taste
for poetry may yet have a taste for romance, and that big figures do
appeal to the imagination.
It is true that there may be something portentous in bigness. "Tom" Reed,
as he was affectionately called, said many wise things in a jesting way.
At a certain crisis in our history he exclaimed: "I don't want Cuba and
Hawaii; I've got more country now than I can love." A foreigner might
suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken at the
extent of our wealth and the rate at which it was growing. They may well
give the impression that there has been created in the "money power," a
Frankenstein monster, the control of whose murderous propensities has put
them at their wit's end.
Figures are notorious liars; they may arouse emotion if looked at in any
light, but they must be looked at in many lights if we would get an
emotional effect that is truly worth while. Some very large figures
relating to Savings Banks have lately been published. The deposits in
these banks amount to over four and two-thirds billions of dollars, and
the number of separate accounts is about ten and two-thirds millions.
Savings deposits in all banks are about $7,000,000,000, the number of
accounts being 17,600,000. Probably the interest paid on the savings banks
deposits is 160 millions of dollars a year. I confess that these figures
give me much pleasure. I like to think that so many men have taken pains
to guard their wives and children against miserable want; that so many
women have to some extent made sure of their independence. It would not be
surprising to find that twelve millions of families, possibly half the
people of the country, were in this way protected against extreme penury.
Viewed in this light, the growth of wealth does not seem so terrible. One
might paraphrase Burke and say that such wealth as this loses half its
evil through losing all its grossness. Indeed one might go further and say
that if there were twice as much of this wealth, and every person in the
country had an interest in it, it would lose all of its evil.
To young people, this is all dry enough. They like to think of spending
money, not of saving it. But it is not at all dry to their elders. It is
what St. Beuve said of literary enjoyment, a "pure d�lice du go�t et du
coeur dans la maturit�." It is a "Pleasure of the Imagination" that can be
appreciated only by those like the old Scottish lawyer, who justified his
penurious prudence by saying that he had shaken hands with poverty up to
the elbow when he was young, and had no intention to renew the
acquaintance. We have not, at least in the Northern part of our country,
had the terrible experiences of the people of Europe, who are even now
hiding their money in a vague apprehension of danger, inherited from
centuries of rapine; but there are few of those who have given hostages to
fortune who have not had many hours, and even years, of distressing
anxiety concerning the future of their families. The greater the provision
made against this heart-corroding care by a people, the happier should
that people be.
It seems so unselfish a luxury to revel in these comfortable statistics,
that one is tempted to broaden his vision, and take in the four or five
billions of assets heaped up by the six or seven millions of people who
have insured their lives, and the one hundred and fifty or two hundred
millions of dollars paid out yearly to lighten the distress attending the
death of husbands and fathers of families,--to say nothing of a much
greater sum repaid policy-holders. In many cases, happily, death causes no
actual want; but against these cases we may offset the stupendous number
of policies insuring against industrial accidents, possibly twenty-five
millions of them, representing one quarter of the people of the
country--for we may be sure that there are few payments made under these
policies that do not actually alleviate suffering. We have here a colossal
aggregate of altruism on the part of the policy-holders, an intangible
national asset grander than all the material wealth which it represents;
for the sordid element in all these savings is necessarily small. There is
a point in the old story of the gambler on the Mississippi steamboat who
listened attentively to the persuasive arguments of a life-insurance
agent; he "allowed" that he was willing to bet on almost any kind of game,
but declined to take a hand in one where he had to die to win. It is
painful to think of the infinity of petty economies, of all the grievous
deprivations, the positive hardships, undergone in so many millions of
families, day by day, and year by year, to secure these policies of
insurance; but, as Plato said, "the good is difficult." There is no
heroism where there is no self-sacrifice. Whoever is disquieted by the
growth of "materialism" may be relieved by reflecting that when so many
millions of people are denying themselves present enjoyments in order that
others may be spared pain in the future, there is such a leaven of high
motive among us as may leaven the whole lump.
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