Much is to be said for the abolition of poverty, and something for the reduction of inordinate wealth. Poverty is being much reduced, and will be farther, the process being limited simply by the degree to which the poor will educate and discipline themselves. We shall never wholly do away with bad luck, bad inheritance, wild blood, laziness, and incapacity: so some poverty we shall always have, but much less than now, and less dire. The fact that the large class of middling rich has been evolved from a world where all began poor, is a promise of a future society where poverty shall be the exception. But such increase of the wealth of the world, and of the number of the virtually rich, will never be attained by the puerile method of expropriating the present holders of wealth. That would produce more poor people beyond doubt--but its effect in enriching the present poor would be inappreciable. You cannot change a man's character and capacity simply by giving him the wealth of another. In wholesale expropriations and bequests the experiment has been many times tried, and always with the same results. The wealth that could not be assimilated and administered has always left the receiver or grasper in all essentials poorer than he was before. Wealth is an attribute of personality. It is not interchangeable like the parts of a standardized machine. The futility of dispossessing the middling rich would be as marked as its immorality. This essentially personal character of wealth must affect the views of those who would attack what are called the inordinate fortunes. I hold no brief for or against the multi-millionaire. In many cases I believe his wealth is as personal, assimilated and legitimate as is the average moderate fortune. In many cases too, I know that such gigantic wealth is in fact the product of unfair craft and favoritism, is to that extent unassimilated and illegitimate. Yet admitting the worst of great fortunes, I think a prudent and fair minded man would hesitate before a general programme of expropriation. He would consider that in many cases the common weal needs such services as very wealthy people render, he would reflect on the practical benefits to the world, of the benevolent enterprises for education, research, invention, hygiene, medicine, which are founded and supported by great wealth. In our time The Rockefeller Institute will have stamped out that slow plague of the south, the hook worm. To the obvious retort that the government ought to do this sort of thing, the reply is equally obvious, that historically governments have not done this sort of thing until enlightened private enterprise has shown the way. Our prudent observer of mankind in general, and of the very rich in particular, would again reflect that, granting much of the socialist indictment of capital as illgained, common sense requires a statute of limitations. At a certain point restitution makes more trouble than the possession of illegitimate wealth.