But can one earn an _hundred million_? Yes, I believe that it is even possible to serve society to such an extent as to earn a hundred million in the span of a human life, or an average of _three million_ a year for thirty-three and one-third years. We have one man in this country who is said to be worth five hundred million. To earn five hundred million one must earn on an average _fifteen_ million a year for thirty-three and one-third years. Is this within the range of human possibility? I believe that it is. Now, I have gone as high as any one has yet gone in collecting, but if there is any young man here with an ambition to render a larger service to the world, I will raise it another notch, if necessary, to encourage him. So almost limitless are the possibilities of service in this age that I am not willing to fix a maximum to the sum a man can honestly and legitimately earn.
Not only do I believe that one _can_ earn five hundred million, but I believe that men _have_ earned it.
In this and other countries many in public life might be mentioned, for even in politics men have great opportunities, which, if rightly improved, enable them to render incalculable service to their fellowmen.
But let us go outside of politics. What shall we say of the man who gave to the world a knowledge of the use of steam and revolutionized the transportation of the globe? How much did he earn? And the man who brought down lightning from the clouds and imprisoned it in a slender wire so that it lights our homes, draws our traffic across the land and carries our messages under the sea; what did he earn? And what of the man who showed us how to hurl our messages thousands of miles through space without the aid of wire? And how much did the man earn who taught us how to wrap the human voice around a little cylinder so that it can be laid away and echo throughout the ages?
Take a very recent invention, the gasolene engine. It has already given us the automobile and the flying machine, and heaven only knows what yet may come with that gasolene engine. My first ride in an automobile was taken in the campaign of 1896; since then something like seventeen million automobiles have been brought into use.