le, which will really make for individual efficiency and
distinction.

The grievance which a democrat may feel towards the existing economic
system is that it makes only partially for genuine individual economic
efficiency and distinction. The political power enjoyed by an individual
American rarely endures long enough to survive its own utility. But
economic power can in some measure at least be detached from its
creator. Let it be admitted that the man who accumulates $50,000,000 in
part earns it, but how about the man who inherits it? The inheritor of
such a fortune, like the inheritor of a ducal title, has an opportunity
thrust upon him. He succeeds to a colossal economic privilege which he
has not earned and for which he may be wholly incompetent. He rarely
inherits with the money the individual ability possessed by its maker,
but he does inherit a "money power" wholly independent of his own
qualifications or deserts. By virtue of that power alone he is in a
position in some measure to exploit his fellow-countrymen. Even though a
man of very inferior intellectual and moral caliber, he is able vastly
to increase his fortune through the information and opportunity which
that fortune bestows upon him, and without making any individual
contribution to the economic organization of the country. His power
brings with it no personal dignity or efficiency; and for the whole
material and meaning of his life he becomes as much dependent upon his
millions as a nobleman upon his title. The money which was a source of
distinction to its creator becomes in the course of time a source of
individual demoralization to its inheritor. His life is organized for
the purpose of spending a larger income than any private individual can
really need; and his intellectual point of view is bounded by his narrow
experience and his class interests.

No doubt the institution of private property, necessitating, as it does,
the transmission to one person of the possessions and earnings of
another, always involves the inheritance of unearned power and
opportunity. But the point is that in the case of very large fortunes
the inherited power goes far beyond any legitimate individual needs, and
in the course of time can hardly fail to corrupt its possessors. The
creator of a large fortune may well be its master; but its inheritor
will, except in the case of exceptionally able individuals, become its
victim, and most assuredly the evil social effects a