Читать книгу The Passing of the Idle Rich онлайн

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That was the America of 1760—and it was the America that Lincoln knew. In the region that he knew as a boy and a man, there were neither great plantations, great factories, nor combines. The bulk of the population lived on small farms, toiled with their own hands, and remained in possession of their own products. A few owned and operated small stores or factories for the making of necessities. These could not grow rich. Great riches must be derived from the labour of many. The rich of the Eastern states fifty years ago were the owners of banks, large importing houses, railroads, and factories. These industries, being small, gave rise to fortunes that now seem small. They were riches, but not great riches.

Think, then, of the transition that I myself have seen! Sometimes, as I sit alone in my library reading and thinking about these matters, and reflecting upon the years that make up my brief lifetime, a sort of terror of to-morrow seizes me. I do not need to guess at the facts of my own world. I know the facts that such satirists as Mr. Upton Sinclair vaguely guess, or gather from the gossip of the stables and the kitchen. The miserable excesses of Society are an open book. I cannot blind my eyes or deafen my ears or close my nostrils and forget them. That decay has set in I know; that it has struck deep, as yet I cannot bring myself to believe. And this book is but my feeble effort to prevent it striking deeper, if I may.