Page:Americans (1922).djvu/274

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roamed, will feel that simply by virtue of being such, life has been made happier and better. If this be the fruit of your labors, you will have succeeded; if not, you will have failed.

Large-scale beneficence—doing good to towns and entire classes of society and nations—establishes one as a member of a privileged order, which the average man regards with a certain uneasy envy. If Carnegie had not taken from us that $350,000,000 we might all and each have had the credit of contributing to the purchase of those organs, the foundation of those libraries, the establishment of those hero funds, the building of that Palace of Peace, the pensioning of those employees, the endowment of those universities, that great fund for the advancement of knowledge. True, we might have contributed. We might have taxed ourselves at that rate. We might have made similar investments in human progress. But we know pretty well that we wouldn't have done so. After we had taxed ourselves for the necessary upkeep and expansion of our army and navy, we should have felt too poor, even had steel sold for some dollars a ton less,—we should still have felt too poor to bear an additional tax for such remote objects as the promotion of heroism or science. We should have felt that we owed it to ourselves and to our families to apportion our little "surplus" to our tobacco funds and our soft-drink funds for the tranquillizing of our nerves and the alleviation of our thirst, or