New-York tribune., 1918-04-09


this total capital is probably not less
than or 10 billions.
Where did this or 10 billions Of
capital come from?
And the Is billions or more of cash
which built the railways? And the bill
ions more which have developed our
coal mines and our vast electrical and
dynamo-building industry? All that mill
ions may ride ten or fifteen miles in
the subway for nickel!
1t was from boarding and saving, and
this by an astonishingly small number
of people.
The Steel Corporation has now above
100000 shareholders and we know not
how many bondholders. The Pennsyl-
vania Railroad alone has 10000 or
$4,000. So we might readily get the
notion that the number of people who
do not put their last dollar into auto
mobiles and expensive homes and high
living is really quite large.
AS matter of fact, it was-computed
a year, or SO ago by prominent Wall
Street house that the list of actually
known bond buyers in the United States
did not much exceed 100000
One in 500 Of the population.
The point is that the holders of Penn
sylvania stock are likely to own Steel Sc
curlties as we'll. How do they get them?
"A time comes, of course, to the saving
man when he cannot spend all his income
except by indulging in scale of extrava
gance which is utterly foreign and even
repellant to his nature.
Henry Ford or Mr. Rockefeller or Mr..
Carnegie might, if they liked, ride in
trains made out of solid gold and stud
ded with diamonds and sapphires and
every kind of precious stone. Thev
might bathe in champagne and dine on
peacocks' tongues and drink pearls dis
solved in wine, as Cleopatra is said to
have done. They could, if they wished,
maintain private retinues of 10000 or
$4,000 men, like the old Earl of War
wick. There is almost no imaginable
luxury they cannot command.
Instead, they live very simply, with a
few servants, eating quite ordinary and,
in Mr.. Rockefeller's case, quite painfully
abstemious food. And their millions pile
up for the use of the whole community
The average man in the United States
spends about 81 per cent of his income
on himself and his family, Mr.. Ford or
Mr.. Rockefeller or Mr.. Carnegie spends
less than 1 per cent.
The other 80 per cent goes to swell
that fund of loanable and investment
capital which builds the railways and
opens the coal mines and the iron mines
to make the steel and build the subways
which millions daily use For nickel
This is what is meant by the "comr1u-
nlty' value of capital. Every man, wom-
an and child in New York City and New
York State and the United States par
ticipates directly in it's benefit.
Of the immediate situation Mr.. Van-
derlip observes:
Economic relations are being radically
changed by the pressure OF conditions
which" themselves temporary, and
there is evident danger of reaction when
these conditions disappear. To meet this
situation without disaster industry must
be sustained after the war by large new
investments in constructive work. There
never is full employment for the indus
tries except when such investments are
being made
"The almost complete absorption Of
surplus incomes by public loans during
the period of the war will throw the
country behind it's normal DEVELOPMENT.
and, in order to recover this lost ground,
as we'll as to provide immediate employ
ment for the country's wage earners, it
will be important promptly to organize
our resources to finance these new opera
tions."
Some day when Mr. Hiram johnson
and Mr.. George L. Record discover 2
new Golconda from which the nations
and the worlds need of capital may be
supplied these considerations will be
quite useless.
They are very important now.
Society for its material progress re-
quires capital.
Capital cannot be produced by magic.
1t has got to be saved. Either few in
dividuals must continue to save it and
continue to be rewarded for doing so by
the system of interest and increment, or
the state must save it, There is no
third way.
And when the state begins to save our
capital for us-that is, to practise thrift.
for every one-that will be the beginning
Of the end of the institution of private
property and the beginning also, as we
believe, of an intolerable tyranny
against which the Bolsheviki would be
the first to revolt
They Are Criminals