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lation little better than serfs, and living at the point of starvation upon the meanest possible fare, such fare as none of our people could or would eat, and you do not find one millionaire in Russia, always excepting the Emperor and a few nobles who own the land, owing to their political system. It is the same, to a great extent, in Germany. In France, where the people are better off than in Germany, you cannot count one half-dozen millionaires in the whole country. In the old home of our race, in Britain, which is the richest country in all Europe the richest country in the world save one, our own there are more millionaires than in the whole of the rest of Europe, and its people are better off than in any other. You come to our own land; we have more millionaires than in all the rest of the world put together, although we have not one to every ten that is reputed so.

Under our present conditions the millionaire who toils on is the cheapest article which the community secures at the price it pays for him, namely, his shelter, clothing, and food.

The inventions of to-day lead to concentrating industrial and commercial affairs into huge concerns. You cannot work the Bessemer process successfully without employing thousands of men upon one spot. You could not make the armor for ships without first expending seven millions of dollars, as the Bethlehem Company has spent. You cannot make a yard of cotton goods in competition of the world without having an immense factory and thousands of men and women aiding in the process. The great electric establishment here in your town succeeds because it has spent millions, and is prepared to do its work upon a great scale. Under such conditions it is impossible but that wealth will flow into the hands of a few men in properous times beyond their

needs. But out of fifty great fortunes which Mr. Blaine had a list made of he found only one man who was reputed to have made a large fortune in manufacturing. These are made from real estate more than from all other causes combined; next follows transportation, banking. The whole manufacturing world furnished but one millionaire.

But assuming that surplus wealth flows into the hands of a few men, what is their duty? How is the struggle for dollars to be lifted from the sordid atmosphere surrounding business and made a noble career?

Wealth has hitherto been distributed in three ways: the first and chief one is by willing it at death to the family. Now, beyond bequeathing to those dependent upon one the revenue needful for modest and independent living, is such a use of wealth either right or wise? I ask you to think over the result, as a rule, of millions given over to young men and women, the sons and daughters of the millionaire. You will find that, as a rule, it is not good. Nothing is truer than this, that as a rule the 'almighty dollar" bequeathed to sons or daughters by millions proves an almighty curse. It is not the good of the child which the millionaire parent considers when he makes these bequests, it is his own vanity; it is not affection for the child, it is the self-glorification for the parent which is at the root of this injurious disposition of wealth. There is only one thing to be said for this mode, it furnishes one of the most efficacious means of rapid distribution of wealth ever known.

There is a second use of wealth, less common than the first, which is not so injurious to the community, but which should bring no credit to the testator. Money is left by millionaires to public institutions when they must relax their grasp upon it. There is no grace,

and can be no blessing, in giving what cannot be withheld. It is no gift, because it is not cheerfully given, but only granted at the stern summons of death. The miscarriage of these bequests, the litigation connected with them, and the manner in which they are frittered away, seem to prove that the Fates do not regard them with a kindly eye. We are never without a lesson that the only mode of producing lasting good by giving large sums of money is for the millionaire to give as close attention to its distribution during his life as he did to his acquisitions. We have to-day the noted case of five or six millions of dollars left by a great lawyer to found a public library in New York, an institution needed so greatly that the failure of this bequest is a misfortune. It is years since he died; the will is pronounced invalid through a flaw, although there is no doubt of the intention of the donor. It is sad commentary upon the folly of men holding the millions which they cannot use until they are unable to put them to the end they desire. Peter Cooper, Pratt of Baltimore, and Pratt of Brooklyn, and others are the type of men who should be taken by you as your model; they distributed their surplus during life.

The third use, and the only noble use of surplus wealth, is this: That it be regarded as a sacred trust, to be administered by its possessor, into whose hands it flows, for the highest good of the people. Man does not live by bread alone, and five or ten cents a day more revenue scattered over thousands would produce little or no good. Accumulated into a great fund, and expended as Peter Cooper expended it for the Cooper Institute, establishes something that will last for generations. It will educate the brain, the spiritual part of man. It furnishes a ladder upon which the aspiring poor may climb; and there is

no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself. When you stop boosting, he falls, to his injury. Therefore, I have often said, and I now repeat, that the day is coming, and already we see its dawn, in which the man who dies possessed of millions of available wealth which was free and in his hands ready to be distributed will die disgraced.

Of course I do not mean that the man in business may not be stricken down with his capital in the business, which cannot be withdrawn, for the capital is the tool with which he works his wonders and produces more wealth. I refer to the man who dies possessed of millions of securities which are held simply for the interest they produce, that he may add to his hoard of miserable dollars. By administering surplus wealth during life great wealth may become a blessing to the community, and the occupation of the business man accumulating wealth may be elevated so as to rank with any profession. In this way he may take rank even with the physician, one of the highest of our professions, because he too, in a sense, will be a physician looking after and trying not to cure, but to prevent, the ills of humanity.

Such is the man whom the future is to honor, while he who dies in old age retired from business, possessed of millions of available wealth, is to die unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

I may justly divide young men into four classes;

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First, those who must work for a living, and set before them as their aim the acquisition of a modest competence of course, with a modest but picturesque cottage in the country and one as a companion "who maketh sunshine in a shady place" and is the good angel of his life. The motto of his class, No. 1, might be given

as "Give me neither poverty nor riches." "From the anxieties of poverty as from the responsibilities of wealth, good Lord, deliver us."

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Class No. 2, comprising those among you who are determined to acquire wealth, whose aim in life is to belong to that much-talked-of and grandly abused class, the millionaire, those who start to labor for the greatest good of the greatest number, but the greatest number always number one, the motto of this class being shòrt and to the point: "Put money in thy purse. Now, the third class comes along. ship is neither wealth nor happiness. with "noble ambition;" the desire of fame is the controlling element of their lives. Now, while this is not so ignoble as the desire for material wealth, it must be said that it betrays more vanity. The shrine of fame has many worshipers. The element of vanity is seen in its fiercest phase among those who come before the public.

The god they wor-
They are inflamed

Now, it does not seem to me that the love of wealth is the controlling desire of so many as the love of fame; and this is matter for sincere congratulation, and proves that under the irresistible laws of evolution the race is slowly moving onward and upward. Take the whole range of the artistic world, which gives sweetness and light to life, which refines and adorns, and surely the great composer, painter, pianist, lawyer, judge, statesman, all those in public life, care less for millions than for professional reputation in their respective fields of labor.

But there is a fourth class, higher than all the preceding, who worship neither at the shrine of wealth nor fame, but at the noblest of all shrines, the shrine of service - service to the race. Self-abnegation is its

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