The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-01-26
THE MENACE OF ENORMOUS FORTUNES

garded as the greatest to our institutions
because, by their rapid growth they are absorbing
| all the wealth of the countr, into few hands
thus giving the owners Of them power which will
soon prove greater than that Of the government IL
self. President Roosevelt started the ball rolling
| IN recent utterance. as follows:
1T Is important to this people to grapple with
the problem of enormous fortunes feel
that we shall ultimately have TO consider the adop-
ton of some such scheme that of the progressive
inheritance tax on all fortunes beyond a certain
! amount, either given in life or divided or be-
queathed upon death to any individual-a tax so
framed as to put it out of the power of the owner
/ of one of these fortunes to hand on more than a
! certain amount to any one individual"
! One United States senator termed this frank
socialism," Inasmuch as such law wopld have
to pass the United States senate sometimes called
the "Millionaires Club" it is liable to have hard
Shedding. On general principles. such law would
be just measure. It would not take ANYTHING
from who had acquired it. He could eniov
it as long he lived, and then upon his death
his heirs would get more than they could possibly
use, and the balance be distributed
But is such law necessary? Do enormous in
diyidua fortunes constitute menace to the vel
fare OF the nation! Fortunes which come under
this head have been accumulated within the pAst
forty years, and most of them within the last
twenty years Men who accumulate them are in
variably poor at the beginning and get to +bo
top by great ability and force of character. The
methods they employ are frequently INSCRIPTIONS
and they acquire their wealth at the expense of mo-
rality and honesty. About the time they have sc
cumulated the vast fortune, however, they are old
men and death is not far off Then comes the
question of keeping the swollen fortune intact
The descendants of these able men are invaria
bly, ulfltted for business In fact their sons are
brought up IN such way that they never acquire
business ability. They are surrounded by every
luxury, spend much of their time in Europe. and
IN yachting and automobiling They associate with
those who regard business life as stain and pro-
coed to purchase long line of ancestors who never
engaged IN business. One such scion recently
stated, regretfully Il am the first of my line Nv
father was IN trade, you know" Following the
same trend. the daughters marry European titles.
III order TO become noble as well as rich
Various devices have been adopted in European
countries to keep fortunes intact One is the law
OF primogeniture, whereby the eldest son inherits
all Another is the entailing of estates. putting It
so that it will remain intact in the family for CEN
turtles Parents of nobility also assist in this. be-
cause when a nobleman becomes penniless. there is
always some wealthy BRIDESMAIDS daughter glad TO
marry him, to become "My Lady, Notwith
standing all of these aids of the law fortunes in
Europe become scattered, and today the penniless
hobeman is more numerous than the wealthy one
In This country there are such things as primo
genlture, entaiment nobility. The irresistible
tendency is toward distribution Even if wealthy
man should leave all of his fortune to one person
the will would be broken Let the son of wealthy
man become penniless, and he is merely "Mr.
Smith" and is very unattractive to wealthy
heress.
There is natural law of distribution which
works irresistibly in such cases. No device vet
found has prevented it. Wealth distributes itself
just as the sap distributes itself in tree. Start
ing III the trunk it radiates into the branches the
tWigs and he leaves, until finally it is distributed
INTO million portions. The original accumulation
OF the wealth, as the trunk of the tree might be-
come dangerous weapon; but the leaf is entirely
harmless. Even if the heirs to swollen fortune
are not spendthrifts, the money becomes dstribut-
eel Wealthy man leaves, say. four children; in
tne third generation, at the same ratio the fortune
SdlVlded into sixty-four parts and in the next
generation into two hundred and fifty-six parts
When one dies without children and his fortune
goes to col lateral heirs it is at once divided into
PROBABLY a hundred or thousand parts
How hai this worked out in our own country?
what has become of the enormous fortunes of
stanford, Hopkins, Flood and Huntington? The
Vanderbilt fortune has been split into dozen
parts, although only one generation old Russell
oage recently died, leaving fifty millions of prac-
ideally cash. assets to his widow. She is an old
woman, whd cannot long survive. and at whose
death this f rtune is sure to be divided into many
parts George Gould is notable exception to the
rule He hips taken up railroading where his
father left Off and is one of the giants in the fl