INHERITANCE AND INCOME TAXES 149
can accumulate five hundred dollars to his one, but
because, through the operation of this special privilege,
it is at his, the poor man’s, expense that the rich man’s
accumulation is made. Ex-Governor Long says that
there will be discontent just so long as certain comforts
and possessions are within the reach of one class and
beyond the reach of another class. This discontent
Archbishop O’Connell calls the “tumultof theenvious.”
But unprivileged men, whether unprivileged rich or
unprivileged poor, have not far to look to find that
discontent and envy start only where skill and enterprise
leave off and special privilege begins. You are not
envious of Edison or Marconi or Bessemer or railroad
magnates, or captains of industry; you gladly accord
them princely rewards as public benefactors. It is
only when the people are called upon to provide an
Edison fortune for every city and town in the country
through privileged exaction that your discontent is
aroused. It is only when they are required to super
impose upon an unprivileged steel fortune of three or
four millions a privileged fortune of a thousand millions,
based upon economic rent, that the shoe begins to
pinch. It is only when the ore baron, the coal baron,
the oil baron, the railroad baron, and the land baron
are privileged to take ten dollars or a hundred dollars
from their wages and add it to the monopoly price of
coal and iron and oil that men are swayed by the
“tumult of the envious.”
Legislation has been busy constituting criminal
offences. The air is charged with criminal prosecution
and conviction where fortunes have been swelled
through violation of law. But is it not true that neither
legislatures nor courts have seriously addressed