The Scranton Tribune

The Right Disposition of Wealth.

They held at Yale the other day a debate upon the question, "What would be the best disposition of Andrew Carnegie's great wealth?" and the most sensible opinion offered came from Professor J. C. Schwab of the department of political economy, who said: "Probably the best thing that Mr. Carnegie could do with his money would be to employ it actively in business; that is, he should build factories and railroads and employ his money productively. If that is out of the question, let him do as he has been doing, establish libraries and similar institutions. The least advantageous way for the disposition of the Carnegie millions would be to establish so-called charitable institutions."

Professor Schwab's last sentence may need explanation. It is not supposable that the professor is hostile to charities; but, as a sensible economist he doubtless realizes that prevention of the conditions which necessitate charities is preferable to indiscriminate bestowal of alms. His thought, we assume, was that the best charity is the busy factory, mill or railroad, or the well endowed school or public library, not because it is a charity but because it largely does away with the need for charities. In other words, opportunity rather than gratuity is the proper prescription for men or women who are in misfortune.

It is the fashion of a school of public agitators—demagogues, we might say—to throw odium upon men of means; to incite against them the envy of the excitable poor and to cause it to appear that wealth is necessarily a menace to the working classes. These false economists do not discriminate between the use and the abuse of wealth; they do not explain that without wealth ready to take the initiative in works of production or distribution our great industries would languish and a halt would come to the whole progress of American development; they simply fan the flame of class prejudice and try to make their living out of the trouble which they can create.

In the case of Andrew Carnegie—to continue the concrete illustration begun at Yale university—it is very little, indeed, that Mr. Carnegie personally gets out of his millions. He eats little more food than his employes at Homestead; wears not many more, though perhaps more expensive, clothes, and has shelter which, if more costly in its first cost, is likewise a greater means of putting money in continual circulation than the less expensive cottage of the mill hand whom the Carnegie investments supply with employment.

When Mr. Carnegie dies he will take with him, out of circulation, only the value of the coffin that encloses his remains; and in course of time even that will probably be restored to civilization. The rest of his vast estate will remain as an asset of society at large—doing both good and harm, no doubt, yet doing, upon the whole, more good than harm, and sure, in the long run, to get back into the hands of the people.

If Carnegie owns $100,000,000, which for sake of illustration we will assume that he does, and spends on himself and his personal needs $100,000 a year it is only a tenth of one per cent. taken from the money's interest or dividend-earning power. Few men now in poor circumstances would consider one million the dollar a year a heavy price to pay for an equally efficient management of their affairs. Our city government costs in the neighborhood of twenty-five times as much; and our county and state governments in proportion. The difference between what Carnegie spends personally and what his estate earns each year—let us estimate this in round numbers at $5,000,000—is what, in some way, sooner or later, the community is bound to save by having a manager like Carnegie instead of managers like those who are managing the government of Scranton.

Undoubtedly the best disposition of wealth is to keep it wisely invested in enterprises which bring returns to a large number of people.