The sources of the most pronounced conflict between facts and ideals are that ordinarily a man cannot have more than he creates and conserves; that the desire to will torture those who create and conserve little, as long as they have to look upon others who create and conserve much; and that, as long as the difference lasts, those who have little will want to get hold of what is held by those who have much. The things that all men want, but few men have. Those who have not, envy and often hate those who have. Of late this disposition has been greatly intensified by the multitude of rapid fortunes from the new control of Nature and from the trusts, and the parvenu ostentation accompanying them. It makes a difference whether princely state surrounds the king's son, or one's own pal of yesterday.
Worst of all, so many of these fortunes have been obtained wrongfully that they intensify the impression that _all_ fortunes above the average have.
Now the fundamental question in this conflict is: to whom does that money rightfully belong? Among wise people who are not economists, the width and profundity of the ignorance on this point tends to dissipate the current skepticism regarding the miraculous.
The fortunes wrongfully acquired are exceptional and abnormal. Nearly all comfortable fortunes come from legitimate industry. Within a generation the economists have got the question of to whom they rightfully belong, into the qualitative stage of settlement. The quantitative stage is a much nicer and more complicated problem, and varies more with different cases. Possibly the first germ of the solution appeared a generation ago in a sentence in Marshall's "Economics of Industry."
It was: "The earnings of management of a manufacturer represent the value of the addition which his work makes to the total product of capital and industry." The same holds true of a farmer, miner, transporter, merchant or anybody else who directs industry. It is more easily recognized in the case of the inventor. Francis A. Walker took up this theme and gradually demonstrated that so far from the employer's profits being wrung out of the wage-earner, they are generally greatest where wages are highest, and proceed from devices and economies effected by the employer, and would not exist without them. This is being constantly illustrated by some employers succeeding where others have failed, and failing where others have succeeded. In support of the general thesis Walker says: "Discussions in Economics and Statistics," (Vol. I., pp. 367-75):