The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-05-20
AN INsorunLn rnonLrM.

AN INs0LUBLE PROBLEM.
 Roosevelts inheritance tax rroposi- ton has started anew the discussion about the rich and poor of the country, past and will probably continue while time and humanity last. The evil of immense fortunes and the sufferings of poverty stricken human beings are subjects about which wise men have reasoned and wondered over and no remedy for either has yet been devis- ed
 Among the favors which Agur, the son of Jakeh, asked of the Lord was that neither poverty nor riches should be bestowed oil him, and no doubt the prophet spoke wisely. The man of many millions whose riches are pos sessed. not enjoyed" to use the lam guage of Pope, can hardly be content with what he has. or get any genuine pleasure and satisfaction out of his wealth. With him life Is largely matter of keeping what he already has and continually adding to it. He has a different opinion from that held by the Poet. Milton. who had never ex- perienced the sensation of feeling rich, so we find him saying:
 Let none admire
 That riches grow in hell; that soil
 may best
 Deserve the precious bane
 We suspect that some of the men who have accumulated immense fortunes at the expense of almost everything else, feel pretty much as the poet did, but to the man who lives in the depths of poverty wealth has different ap- pearance and he would gladly have the opportunity of enjoying it so that he might at least learn to be independent
 The evils of immense wealth on ono hand and of dire poverty on the other may be constantly before us and may appeal to us, but where is the remedy? The extreme socialists insist that all property should be equally divided, but under what theory of right and wrong can 1t be done? There are men who have become what most of us would consider vastly rich and have done so honestly and fairly. Under no idea of fairness or justice could the fortune of one of these men be divided out among others. The money is his own, honestly gained. and he is just as fair is entitled to his daily wage. If he is liberal and dispenses much of his wealth among the less fortunate, so much the better, but if he chooses to hold 1t till death calls him we fail to see how he is to be deprived of it.
 There are some other men of vast for tunes whose money has come to them through tortuous paths, who have ground the poor, taken advantage of added to their wealth without regard to the rights or needs of others, but if they have kept within the law how can they be deprived, of it? For any violations of the laws of the country they may be punished-sometimes For unlawful advantage taken of others they may be forced to make restitu- tion-perhaps. but if they keep within the letter of the law they may go on grinding the lives out of the poor and adding to their ill-gotten gains but we see no way for the law to take hold of them, any more than it can take the wealth of the man whose money has come to him without violating any law, human or divine. .-.
 But there is another feature that we have often thought of and have seen no solution of. Suppose the extreme socialistic theories could be put into operation and all the wealth of all the people be equally divided, how long would equality be maintained? Unless the business of equalizing could be done like taking the census, at least once in ten years. would not the inequality soon be as great as ever? It seems just as natural for some men to part with their money as it is for others to rake it in, and unless matters could be so arranged that there should be a balanc- ing of wealth at least every ten years not a generation would pass before we would have mendcants and mill ionaires, just as at present. To take the money of one man and give it to one who doesn't know how to keep it would be about like taking the water from a tight cask and pouring it into a basket.
 And so it is and probably will ever be We may deplore the grinding pow erty of the many and revile the exceed Ing riches of the favored few. but neith- CT offers a solution of the double evil. We know that some men have more than their share of wealth and wet may suspect or know that they got it unfairly. but the fact remains that they have it because they know how to get it and keep it. Then we may sor- row on account of good people who are ground into the very deepest deeps of poverty but in most cases they are poor because they never had any tall ent or faculty for getting and keeping. We may echo the prayer of Agur but who is to answer it for all humani- ty?