At the other end of the scale history reports that “the men who can
manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men
who can manage money manage all.”
So the bankers, watching the
trends in agriculture, industry, and trade, inviting and directing the flow of
capital, putting our money doubly and trebly to work, controlling loans and
interest and enterprise, running great risks to make great gains, rise to the
top of the economic pyramid. From the Medici of Florence and the Fuggers
of Augsburg to the Rothschilds of Paris and London and the Morgans of
New York, bankers have sat in the councils of governments, financing wars
and popes, and occasionally sparking a revolution. Perhaps it is one secret
of their power that, having studied the fluctuations of prices, they know that
history is inflationary, and that money is the last thing a wise man will
hoard.
The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system
must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir
individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police
supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too
expensive, or too transient. Normally and generally men are judged by their
ability to produce–except in war, when they are ranked according to their
ability to destroy.
Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such
abilities, in nearly all societies, is gathered in a minority of men. The
concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability,
and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other
factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and
the laws. Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy,
allowing the most liberty, accelerates it. The relative equality of Americans
before 1776 has been overwhelmed by a thousand forms of physical,
mental, and economic differentiation, so that the gap between the
wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than at any time since Imperial
plutocratic Rome. In progressive societies the concentration may reach a
