§ 4. Examples of Excess of this Desire.

In [the United States and] the more prosperous countries of Europe, there are to be found abundance of prodigals: still, in a very numerous portion of the community, the professional, manufacturing, and trading classes, being those who, generally speaking, unite more of the means with more of the motives for saving than any other class, the spirit of accumulation is so strong that the signs of rapidly increasing wealth meet every eye: and the great amount of capital seeking investment excites astonishment, whenever peculiar circumstances turning much of it into some one channel, such as railway construction or foreign speculative adventure, bring the largeness of the total amount into evidence.

There are many circumstances which, in England, give a peculiar force to the accumulating propensity. The long exemption of the country from the ravages of war and the far earlier period than elsewhere at which property was secure from military violence or arbitrary spoliation have produced a long-standing and hereditary confidence in the safety of funds when trusted out of the owner's hands, which in most other countries is of much more recent origin, and less firmly established.

The growth of deposit-banking in Great Britain, therefore, advances with enormous strides, while in Continental countries it makes very little headway. The disturbed condition of the country in France, owing to wars, leads the thrifty to hoard instead of depositing their savings. But in the United States the same growth is seen as among the English. The net deposits of the national banks of the United States in 1871 were $636,000,000, but in 1883 they had increased more than 83 [pg 128] per cent to $1,168,000,000. Deposit accounts are the rule even with small tradesmen; and the savings-banks of Massachusetts alone show deposits in 1882-1883 of $241,311,362, and those of New York of $412,147,213. The United States also escapes from the heavy taxation which in Europe is imposed to maintain an extravagant army and navy chest. The effect of institutions, moreover, in stimulating the growth of material prosperity is far more true of the United States than of England, for the barriers raised against the movement from lower to higher social classes in the latter country are non-existent here, and consequently there is more stimulus toward acquiring the means of bettering a man's social condition.

The geographical causes which have made industry rather than war the natural source of power and importance to Great Britain [and the United States] have turned an unusual proportion of the most enterprising and energetic characters into the direction of manufactures and commerce; into supplying their wants and gratifying their ambition by producing and saving, rather than by appropriating what has been produced and saved. Much also depended on the better political institutions of this country, which, by the scope they have allowed to individual freedom of action, have encouraged personal activity and self-reliance, while, by the liberty they confer of association and combination, they facilitate industrial enterprise on a large scale. The same institutions, in another of their aspects, give a most direct and potent stimulus to the desire of acquiring wealth. The earlier decline of feudalism [in England] having removed or much weakened invidious distinctions between the originally trading classes and those who had been accustomed to despise them, and a polity having grown up which made wealth the real source of political influence, its acquisition was invested with a factitious value independent of its intrinsic utility. And, inasmuch as to be rich without industry has always hitherto constituted a step in the social scale above those who are rich by means of industry, it becomes the object of ambition to save not merely as much as will afford a large income while in business, but enough to retire from business and live in affluence on realized gains.

[pg 129]

In [the United States,] England, and Holland, then, for a long time past, and now in most other countries in Europe, the second requisite of increased production, increase of capital, shows no tendency to become deficient. So far as that element is concerned, production is susceptible of an increase without any assignable bounds. The limitation to production, not consisting in any necessary limit to the increase of the other two elements, labor and capital, must turn upon the properties of the only element which is inherently, and in itself, limited in quantity. It must depend on the properties of land.

[pg 130]