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Page 35
Since this is so, how can anybody ever dare to shut his eyes to that
incalculable imminency of adventure which environs him even when he is
merely changing trains on some island-platform of the New York Subway? In
our daily living we are never safe from destiny; and who can ever know in
what vacuous and sedentary period of his experience he may suddenly be
called upon to entertain an angel unawares? It is best to be prepared for
anything, at any hour of our lives,--even at those moments that must,
perforce, be "spent waiting at a railway junction."
MINOR USES OF THE MIDDLING RICH
To assert today that the rich are for the most part entirely harmless is
to dare much, for the contrary opinion is greatly in favor. Such wholesale
condemnation of the rich assumes a more general and a more specific form.
They are said to be harmful to the body politic simply because they have
more money than the average: their property has been wrongly taken from
persons who have a better right to it, or is withheld from people who need
it more. But aside from being constructively a moral detriment from the
mere possession of wealth, the rich man may do specific harm through
indulging his vices, maintaining an inordinate display, charging too much
for his own services, crushing his weaker competitor, corrupting the
legislature and the judiciary, finally by asserting flagrantly his right
to what he erroneously deems to be his own. Such are the general and
specific charges of modern anti-capitalism against wealth. Like many deep
rooted convictions, these rest less on analysis of particular instances
than upon axioms received without criticism. The word spoliation does
yeoman service in covering with one broad blanket of prejudice the most
diverse cases of wealth. But spoliation is assumed, not proved. My own
conviction that most wealth is quite blameless, whether under the general
or specific accusation, is based on no comprehensive axiom, but simply on
the knowledge of a number of particular fortunes and of their owners. Such
a road towards truth is highly unromantic. The student of particular
phenomena is unable to pose as the champion of the race. But the method
has the modest advantage of resting not on a priori definitions, but on
inductions from actual experience; hence of being relatively scientific.
Before sketching the line of such an investigation, let me say that in
logic and common sense there is no presumption against the wealthy person.
Ever since civilization began and until yesterday it has been assumed that
wealth was simply ability legitimately funded and transmitted. Even modern
humanitarians, while dallying with the equation wealth = spoliation, have
been unwilling wholly to relinquish the historic view of the case. I have
always admired the courage with which Mr. Howells faced the situation in
one of those charming essays for the Easy Chair of _Harper's_. Driving one
night in a comfortable cab he was suddenly confronted by the long drawn
out misery of the midnight bread line. For a moment the vision of these
hungry fellow men overcame him. He felt guilty on his cushions, and
possibly entertained some St. Martin-like project of dividing his
swallowtail with the nearest unfortunate. Then common sense in the form of
his companion came to his rescue. She remarked "Perhaps we are right and
they are wrong." Why not? At any rate Mr. Howells was not permitted to
condemn in a moment of compassion the career of thrift, industry and
genius, that had led him from a printer's case to a premier position in
American letters, or, more concretely, he received a domestic dispensation
to cab it home in good conscience, though many were waiting in chilly
discomfort for their gift of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of
this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a
particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in
mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly
rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in
notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are
much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they
divorce quickly and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. By
such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful stretches into a
procession, much as a dozen sprightly supernumeraries will keep up an
endless defile of Macduff's army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that
some of the great wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my
subject is not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people
constitute an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too
is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is
chiefly a _succ�s de scandale_. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle
without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the
sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually
credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking
multimillionaire has any representative standing. He is not what a poor
person means by a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your
neighborhood, and she will name all who live gently and do not have to
worry about next month's bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to be
exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes to be
rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but corresponds roughly
to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding to government decree. Rich
people, since the income tax, are officially those who pay the tax but not
the surtax. Families with an income not less than four thousand dollars
nor more than twenty thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us
once for all admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of
quite harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate the
general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are included
in the first class of income taxpayers--on from four to twenty thousand,
that most of the property here held is blamelessly held in good
hands--wealth that in no fair estimate can be regarded as harmful. In
terms of British currency, our category of the middling rich would include
the poorer individuals of the upper classes, the richer persons of the
lower middle class, and the upper middle class as a whole. This comparison
is made not to apply an alien class system which holds very inadequately
here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology.
The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and
artists. My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist
would quite brazenly call the _haute bourgeoisie_. It is quite a
comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately
successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their more highly
paid employees, but including also many artists, and teachers of all
sorts. Incidentally it is an employing and borrowing class in various
degrees, hence especially subject to the exactions of the labor union at
one end, and of the great capitalist and the Trust at the other.
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