People's Pilot, Volume 4, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1895 — Where the Money Kings Live. [ARTICLE]

Where the Money Kings Live.

According to a statistical article to Chambers' Journal, we have In this country seventy citizens whose aggregate wealth amounts to nearly $8,000,000,000, giving and average of $7,500,000 to each person. One estate is returned at $150,000,000. Five Individuals are rated at $100,000,000; six at $50,000,000; six at $40,000,000; four at $35,000,000; thirteen at $30,000,000; ten at $26,000,000; four at $22,000,000 and fifteen at $20,000,000. Besides these seventy big fortunes, there are fifty other persons In the eastern states worth over $10,000,000 each. Pennsylvania has slxty-three millionaires, worth in the aggregate $300,000,000. Sixty persons In three New York villages are worth $600,000,000. Boston alone has fifty families whose wealth amounts to $10,000,000 each. Chambers' Journal says: We have nothing to compare with such Individual cases of wealth in Great Britain. Baron Rothschild and Lord Overton each left about $17,000,000; the late Lord Dudley left $20,000,000; the late Duke of Buccleugh, estimated to be the richest Scotchman, left estates valued at $30,000,000. One living English duke is valued at $50,000,000 and another at $40,000,000, but not many names could be added to these to place against the above list of American fortunes In the United Kingdom Whose Incomes from business profits were returned as over $250,000 a year. In 1886 there were only seventeen estates which paid probate duty on $1,250,000 each year. These are bewildering figures. If wealth continues to concentrate in the hands of a few In the east for another generation as it has done in the past the southern and western states will be mere provinces, and the politics, legislation, commerce, industry and society of the entire country will be dominated by a few hundred families In several of the New England and middle states. Are we soon to reach a point where a few money kings will elect presidents and congress and shape the destinies of the nation with all the absolute power of a despotism? But will this concentration of wealth continue? We cannot believe it. Conditions have changed in the past and we may expect them to change in the future. —Progressive Farmer.