Litchfield enquirer., 1878-07-11
Grab, vs. Inheritance.

The spectacle of millionaire Socialist is nat urally an attractive one, and we cannot wonder that Benjamin F. Buffers sNewburyport speech attracts considerable attention. As near as we can gather he accounts for his position as a stgreenbacker' and his hostility to capital ny taking ground against the inheritance of wealth What man earns, or acquires, to that he IS entitled ]; but he holds that there is no room in a republic for ''the man who, by the exertions of his father or some other relative, has lnher- ited wealth, and who does no work beyond clipping coupons from bondsto be paid by tax es levied on worxingmen." As fair specimen of this class he instances the following:
 There is in New York club called the Tal- ly-ho club It is composed of can hardly guess how many members, because they never invited me to any of their entertainments, but think they have ten four and six horse teams, coaches, and they drive them on the high-road between two palatial hotels, with fine looking man set up behind the coach with a tin horn, or, in this ease, believe it is brass bugle, for what? And who are they? They are all young men of great wealth, of great literary culture, all graduates of colleges-all men who have no other employment on earth but to spend the income of their inherited wealth And all they can find to do is to play coach- men day by day for the fun of the thing. They toil not, neither do they spin; they are. men of a class that is growing in this country, and they are, in my judgment, class that ought te be squelched (Applause.) They are men that have nothing to do on earth and do it eve " day. Every man in this country should have some regular, steady employment, for the good of his fellow-men, and the more money a man has, the greater is his responsibility for the proper employment of that money in some industrial or other enterprise for the good of his race; and for the men who do not do that the wOFkingmen ought to vote to bring about law to make them do it. If I had my way, if had the power in the city of New York, at once had fer short time, would set that class of men to doing exactly what they have shown they are fit for, driving Broadway om- nIbuses from six in the morning to nine at night, so that they should have enough of play ing coachmen.
 Cornelius Vanderbilt wasa public benefactor, but Wm. H. Vanderbilt shouldbe be ''squelch- ed" A. T. Stewart did proper thing in ac- cunulating his millions, but Judge Hilton needs to be abolished. John Jacob Astor was well enough in his day, but ths subsequent . Astors should have been apprenticed to hat ters. Such being the gospel according to But ter, what is'to become of the hard earnings of his lifetime whenever he shall be removed from among us? Is the nation to be his heir :? In short this sort of Communism seems to be judiciously arranged so as to distribute the &C., cumulations of the AstOrs, the Stewarts, and the Vanderbilts, while it does not Interfere with the accumulations of Butler Why this dis tinction? If it was right for the ancestor to grab his million away from his less astute fel- low citizens. why may not the heir lawfully hold what was lawfully grabbed
 We can readily see that the prependerancc of Vanderbilts of Stewards, of Astors, and of Buffers is in certain sense dangerous to the liberty of the citizen. If property goes on slipping out of the hands of the many and ac- cumulating in the hands of the few, America may indeed degenerate into mere aristocra- cy; but we respectfully submit that society runs vastly more risk from the original Butler than from any of the subsequent Buffers. If any of that family is to be ''squelched," let it be B. F. Butler by all means.
 In short, let Communism say to this rich man, as Christ said to another rich man, cen- turies ago: ''First divide your immense estate among the poor. In no other way can you qualify yourself to preach our gospel"