Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1892 — What Makes Millionaires? [ARTICLE]

What Makes Millionaires?

The New York Tribune Is publishing a list of the millionaires in the United States to show that “protective tariff is merely one of the causes in operation to prodcue millionaires.’’ The list is completed for all States from Alabama to and including Ohio, except for New York City. Out of a total of 2,233 mlllonalres the Tribune admits that 667 have made their fortunes in protected industries. No man can earn a million dollars in a life time, except by speculative investments in a monopoly or corner of some kind. Of course there are other monopolies than those growing outof protection, but it will not be easy to find another that has produced 30 per cent, of our millionaires, though speculation in land would be a close second. The mortgaged farmer and the million of laborers out of employment will watch with interest the completion of this list. Some of them may feel proud to live in a country with 4,000 or 6,000 millionaires; but others, and their number is increasing, *will contrast their poverty with all of this wealth, and wonder by what alchemy these 4,000 or 5,000 men were enabled to filch their millions out of the pockets—yes, and mouths—of the wealth producers, and what the final result will be on our democratic institutions and government. Senator Ingalls had a few words to say on this subject before he got “out of a job. ” “We cannot," said he, “disguise the truth that we are on the verge of an impending revolution; the old issues are dead. The people are arraying themselves upon one side or the other of a portentous contest. On one. side is capital, formidably intrenched in privilege, arrogant for continual triumph, conservative, tenacious to old theories, demanding new concessions, enriched by domestic levy and foreign commerce, and struggling to adjust all values to its own standard. On the other is labor, asking for employment, striving to develop domestic industries, battling with the forces of nature and subduing the wilderness; labor, starving and sullen in cities, resolutely determined to overthrow a system under which the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer —a system which gives to a Vanderbilt the possession of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and condemns the poor to a poverty which has no refuge from starvation except the prison or the grave."