Two points are notable in the popular belief as to that standard. One is that all classes in the community are supposed somehow to share in its beneficences, and the other is that the measuring rod used is material and economic. The leaders in the “marvellous advance” are automobiles, radios, vacuum cleaners, electric washing machines, telephones, etc. It is assumed that spiritual and intellectual progress will somehow come also from the mere accumulation of “things,” and this assumption has become a sort of American religion with all the psychological implications of religious dogma. In business circles, mass-production, on which our present prosperity is based, is not considered merely as a transient and possibly an unsound economic phase, but as the creator of “the highest standard of living ever attained,” and, as such, as little to be doubted or questioned as God the Creator before Darwin. At any rate, mass-production is so closely linked to the ninety billion dollars that the two may be considered as the heads and tails of the same coin, and the by-products of one those of the other. It may be noted that, although ninety billion dollars is a staggering sum to contemplate, we receive something of a shock when we read farther that the average income of all persons “gainfully employed” was $2210 a year. When we turn to another statistical source and find that nearly ten thousand persons paid taxes on incomes of from $100,000 to[Pg 37] $1,000,000 year each, two hundred and twenty-eight on incomes over $1,000,000, and fourteen on incomes of over $5,000,000 each, we begin to wonder whether the masses are getting quite their share of the benefits of mass-production. It is evident that however great the “national” wealth may be, there is something very queer about its distribution, and that the gulf between the average man and the rich man has widened with appalling rapidity.