The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-12-05
1 RIIIIONAIRE.

with almost individual satisfaction over the fact that when the shares of Standard Oil reached the record quotation of 567, John D. Rocke- feller became a billionaire.
 or course there is not a single in- diyidual who can grasp such col collosal accumulation of figures as one billion. While it can be made use of in a mathematical computa- ton by the use of certain symbols, no average mind appreciates the full significance of a billion.
 Very great numbers in course of time become to the untrained mind merely suggestive of intinity and on thing else, and this very well eX- presses the average conception and the average realization of the huge sum included in a billion dollars.
 Rockefellers wealth we say is enormous, and that is precisely as close as we will come to understand ing or fully appreciating it's gigan- tic dimensions without cartographlc designs showing the relative size Of it with other collosal conceptions of size in figures.
 All of that however is immateria1. The material point is that the tre- mendous accumulation of wealth which has fallen to the lot of Rockefeller is one that well is sub iected to consideration so that it may "point a moral and adorn Q tale.
 This great wealth is not the re- ward of the labor of Rockefeller in that it is the result of his endeavors and the product of his own individu- al work. IL is not the reward of abstinence as the Mill economists have claimed concerning such accu- mutations. It is not the reward comes from superior management and the product of genius and skill.
 The abstemiousness of Rockefeller has helped his pursuit of riches; his organization ability has aided it still more; his perspicacity in judging men has also been powerful factor in his wealth requirement. But there are men who have greater skill and genius and virtue in all these lines than Rockefeller, and they died poor.
 We miss the whole significance of this billioned American if we regard him anything else but the result Of of the system: the very favored re suit to be sure, but just as much the victim of circumstances, of eco homie conditions, as the man who tolls all his life and dies in the poOrhouse.
 Rockefeller the other day said that the opportunities for doing as he has done were greater today than ever before That is not the case and the reason it is not the case is that the organizations which began with Standard Oil and have extended throughout the industrial realm have practically made those oppor- tunities nonresident because un- necessary.
 The story of the Rockefeller for tune is really the story of the evolu- ton of American industry. It is even more important as American history than the school stories Of presidential campaigns, nternation- al relations and the other matters which receive such conspicuous at tention from those writers of school history who generally are quite cap able of ignoring the really import ant factors in the life and growth of the nations.
 The story of Standard Oil brings us back to that period of the coun- Ty's history when the United States began to organize it's unlimited in- dustrial resources. The machinations and movements of the economic pup pets who reacted to the stimulus of their money-making environment are indeed just beginning to make themselves felt. And the rise of in- dustry upon a gigantic scale adjust ed to the gigantic distances and the gigantic quality of the national re- sources, is absorbingly interesting.