The attention of the world has been centred upon the millionaires whom
this mighty trade has made. The very book which I have quoted so literally
carries as its luring subtitle, "The Story of a Thousand Millionaires." "A
huge, exclusive preoccupation with dollar-getting," says H. G. Wells. But
an occupation that finds the red earth and the white earth, carries it
hundreds of miles to where the coal is stored or the gas is ready to be
lighted, assembles the labor from Europe, and converts that red earth,
with almost human possibilities, into rails and locomotives (that have
together made a republic such as the United States possible), into forty-
story buildings and watch-springs, into bridges and mariners' needles,
into battle-ships and lancets, into almost every conceivable instrument of
human use, can hardly be rightfully called a preoccupation with dollar-
getting, though it has brought the perplexing problem that has so much
disturbed the hopes of democracy, dreaming of such masterful children,
producers, and poets, yet dreading the very inequalities that their
energies create.
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