The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1880-11-05
Anericen Incenes.

THERE ii mo table Of the average
duration of fortunes: but the statistics
of business failures in the country since
1866 show that the average yeorty iaai-
ures ranged from one in 1853 in the year
1871 to one in Is In 1876. How many
business men in q thousand fail, once
or more during .heir business lIfetlme;
cannot learn. The proportion used
to be estimated for New England at "
per cent. That is probably too high q
figure for the business Of to-day. con-
Quoted as it is upon much shorter cred
its than formerly. Blu: the proportion
of traders who fail is probably not lower
than IS per cent. of the whole number.
How many of our people live upon
their invested means? In 1866 our in
come-tax returns showed I'll, 600 in
comes of $500 per year and over, and
5000, 900 incomes of less than $500.
But these were not incomes from cap
ital; they were mostly earnings or
wages. Probably not one in hundred
of these smaller incomes. and not over
10 per cent. of the incomes over $500,
represented the interest upon invest
ments. In France, ten years later, the
census returned no less than 1000, 600
of people, renters, who live entirely
upon their invested means. In 1877
seven and half millions of the people
-one-fifth of the population--were en-
rolled as rentes-holders or savings
banks depositors, but it must be added
that the savings-banks do not often fail
in France, and that sooner or later they
are apt to fail with us. Most of these
deposits are small ones. But no less
than two millions of the French can say
with Petrarch, PGrUG sed apea mihi:
"It is little enough, but it will do for
me-"
Thus, in spite of the resources of the
country, in spite of the almost univer-
sal search for wealth, and in spite of
the fact that we have great many rich
men at any given time, we still do not
have a large class of permanently rich
men; we do not even have, like the
French, alarge class of persons who have
q permanent, though small competence.
The rich American wealth is extreme
ly volatile; in nine cases out of ten it is
''fairy gold" The old landowners
form the chief exception to the rule;
especially in our large cities, where the
increase of values has been great.
But if our class of permanently
wealthy people is small, so also is our
class of destitute people. We are for
tunate in having few of the very rich or
the very poor, in having no such inn
mense and harmful inequality of for
tunes as we see in modern England.
Our i'll fortune is this, that our class of
moderate completeness is also small,
that so few of us, in spite of our OPP
portunities and our labOrs, have seized
the good of even small assured COM
petence. The land is full of people
who have not, on the other hand, and
who are not likely to have, any assured
competence, however moderate, but
who have nothing to expect but labor
to the end. That is, indeed, the ap-
pointed human lot for the majority In
any community; but need it be, in az
country of resources like this, so nearly
the universal lot? Might not many Of
us avoid it by a greater care for mod
crate competence, lessened ambition
for fortunes?-T. II. Coas, in Harper's
Mn0nziUp