This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...their wealth for the sake of their fellow men, and who denounce as an intrusion the suggestion that the world has rights which they are bound to respect, are parasites. No man ought to be permitted to use or to dispose of his wealth as if it were entirely his own. Large numbers of ignoble rich seem to have no object in ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...their wealth for the sake of their fellow men, and who denounce as an intrusion the suggestion that the world has rights which they are bound to respect, are parasites. No man ought to be permitted to use or to dispose of his wealth as if it were entirely his own. Large numbers of ignoble rich seem to have no object in life except to flit from one fashionable resort to another, to keep yachts and motor-cars, to attend receptions and theaters. Lady Henry Somerset once wrote in a pathetic strain of London women, "who ride in Hyde Park, daintily wiping their delicate faces with fifteen-dollar handkerchiefs." How much more are they doing to make the world better or richer, than the beggars who go from house to house, getting barely enough to keep their rickety old bodies from hunger and cold? The one class gets a living by begging; the other gets a living by using that which they have never earned, and for which they make no adequate compensation. Social parasites are chiefly at the two extremes of the social scale: they do nothing for the public welfare and they exist to get and not to give. It is difficult to characterize such persons. In many instances the term parasite is too mild. Parasitism among human beings sometimes becomes criminal; voluntary wrongdoing is always criminal. Those at the upper end of the scale, who have the ability to improve the human condition, and do not use that ability, are more dangerous than tramps, because their non-productiveness is more often associated with ability and opportunity to do good work. He who spends a fortune which society earned for his great-grandfather in purchasing luxuries for himself exclusively, and she who, without a thought of the hunger which compels her sister to starve, or to sin, rides in he...
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