The money-making spirit,
A gold-scraping and a wealth-hunting fiend,
Making money, plodding on, and on, and on—
The really important point of all is, Into whose pockets does this plunder really go?
It would be some excuse and satisfaction if even a fair proportion of it went to the masses of laboring-men;
A fair division and generous average to those workmen and workwomen—that would be something. 

But the fact itself is nothing of the kind,
The profits go altogether to a few score select persons,
A few people with money here and there,
Wealth unbounded, greed as unbounded,
A dollar dearer to them than Christ’s blessing,
All love, all hopes, less than the thought of gain.
The throes of heroes, great deeds at which the gods might stand appalled,
The shriek of a drowned world,
Would touch them never in the heart, but only in the pocket.

What business, profit, wealth, without a taint?
Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving,
A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming,
The increasing aggregation of capital in the hands of a few,
All the rest without anything everywhere.

Legislators, lawyers, the priests, and the educated and pious prefer certain advantages to themselves over the vast retinues of the poor, the laboring, ignorant man, black men, sinners, and so on. My God! are men always to go on taxing, stealing, one man feasting on the ruins of another?

Have you heard the gurgle of the vast ganglions of bankers and merchant princes or shameless gluttons,
Perfectly willing to stuff themselves,
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
While they laugh at the good fun of the starvation of others?
I see a smoucher grabbing the good dishes exclusively to himself,
And grinning at the starvation of others, as if it were funny,
I gaze on the greedy hog;
He snorts as he roots in the delicate greenhouse.

The money-maker plotted all day,
Worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages,
But when the gaunt and the starved awkwardly come for their slice,
The quiet changes to angry hysterics.

The ignorant man is demented with the madness of owning things. It is the endless delusion of big and little smouchers, in all their varieties, to suppose they have succeeded when the documents are signed and sealed, and they enter in possession of their gains.
The orthodox proprietor says, “This is mine. I earned or received or paid for it, and by positive right of my own, I will put a fence around it, and keep it exclusively to myself.” That dismal and measureless fool not to see the hourly lessons of the one eternal law, that he would grab blessings to himself, as by right, and deny others their equal chance, and will not share with them everything that he has.

I am hungry and with my last dime get me some meat and bread,
And have appetite enough to relish it all,
But then, like a phantom at my side, suddenly appears a starved face, either human or brute, uttering not a word.
Now do I talk of mine and his?
Has my heart no more passion than a squid or clam shell has?

What is more terrible, more alarming, than the highly artificial and materialistic bases of modern civilization, with the corresponding arrangements and methods of living—the total want of any fusion and mutuality of love, belief, and rapport of interest, between the comparatively few successful rich, and the great masses of the unsuccessful, the poor? As a mixed political and social question, is not this full of dark significance?

Those who jog along their solid, easy way, and are not in danger of falling, know very little of the shifts and frequent desperations of the existence of the poor. There are plenty of hard-up fellows in this city, and out in the mines, and all over. You have no idea how many run ashore, get sick from exposure, poor grub, etc. Many young men, some old chaps, some boys of I5 or I6—I met them everywhere.

Did you ever think, for a moment, how so many young men, full of the stuff to make the noblest heroes of the earth, really pass their lives, year after year? Decent working-people trying to keep up a good appearance, but living daily by toil, from hand to mouth—constant toil—ever alert to keep the wolf back from the door—sleeping in some cramped and dirty place—never knowing once a beautiful happy home—with nothing ahead—no development—no rational pleasure—and so till death.

In the mechanical nature of most kinds of labor, a series of repeated experiences,
No new lessons are learned, no new volitions made,
Routine baffles the powers of thought, attention flags amidst unvarying toil,
And reason is dizzied by the perpetual recurrence of the same petty details.

Incessant, monotonous drudgery produces an exhaustion of the muscular and nervous system; the sense of weariness which follows excessive labor is almost insufferable. What wonder they are tempted to kindle within their sluggish systems some sparkles of genial life by transient exhilaration?
The natural cure is some powerful excitant, that worst form of practical atheism, which makes illicit pleasure the sole end of existence—the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings, artificial stimulants to waken an enthusiasm. That is the stuff the world now seems to want—the burning strong liquors, drunkenness, the fiery fountain which bubbles up from hell. Take whiskey from a man as he is constituted now, and he will take absinthe, hasheesh—a plain cup of water is an insult.

Blame for the drunkenness, so common among the working classes of all countries, may fairly be referred back to the taskmasters, who compel this violation of natural laws by the repugnant toil they impose. There must be something in these confining occupations which induces thirst.
Exciting drinks seem to set free prisoned talents, open wide prospects, and break up the plodding crowd of common thoughts.
Enthusiasm—without that what is a man?
Better zest, ardor, warmth, decision, than nothing—than merely colorless inanity,
Better misapplied heat than no heat at all.

The payment for women’s labor is miserably poor—
The gauntish woman was quite young, a rag-bundled, half-starv’d infant in her arms—her figure and gait told misery, terror, destitution. Her voice, and everything, seem’d queer, terrified; eyes, voice, and manner were those of a corpse, animated by electricity. Poor woman—what story was it, out of her fortunes, to account for that inexpressibly scared way, those glassy eyes, and that hollow voice?

The poets of the cosmos dissolve poverty from its need and riches from its conceit,
You large proprietor, they say, do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts, for you only, and not for him and her?
Lots in business that passes for ability is only brutality—don’t forget that, you master,
You are not so damned clever as you think,
You may crack a whip over men and you may be useless nevertheless,
You’re only coarse, cruel, wanton—that’s all, that’s all.
You shall not realize or perceive more than anyone else,
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off—just as much as you.

Real democracy and great riches are in some sort repugnant to one another. Riches demand the use of the house for themselves; riches draw off the attention from the principles of democracy which are abstractions, called the rights of man. And men have frequently to choose whether they will retain one or the other. My own opinion is that no amount of riches which numbers can calculate will ever make up to any live man for the deprivation of rational liberty and equality.

The creation of a large, independent, democratic class of small owners is the main thing. So long as they have their health and a good living, and see their friends in the enjoyment of the same blessings, they are very well satisfied. The employment just suits them, and the income is neither more or less than they want.
No man can become truly heroic who is really poor. He must have food, clothing, and shelter, and a little money in the bank too.

The family, parentage, childhood, husband and wife,
The house-comforts, the house itself and all its belongings,
Our modern wonders, the human-divine inventions, the labor-saving implements,
Life complete but cheap—the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, within reach of all,
Women’s, men’s, and children’s, their wants provided for, and tinged for once with joy,
All for the modern, all for the average man of today—
This may not be the best show, but it is the best reality.
(Who would wish to stay in mansions, when offer’d quarters with all the modern improvements, with all the fun that’s going?)

It is in some sense true that a man is not a whole and complete man unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on. It is indicated by the universal instinctive desire for landed property, and by the fuller sense of independent manhood which comes from the possession of it. The true gravitation-hold of liberalism will be a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general comfort.

The true prosperity of a nation is not in the great wealth of a special class, but is only to be really attain’d in the production and perennial establishment of millions of comfortable city homesteads and moderate-sized farms, healthy and independent, single separate ownership.
The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad foil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds. A great and varied nationality were firmest held and knit by the principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners. 

Beneath the whole political world, what most presses and perplexes today, sending vastest results affecting the future, is the question of the treatment of working people by employers, and all that goes along with it.
Of course I find I’m a good deal more of a socialist than I thought I was; maybe not technically, politically, but intrinsically in my meanings—not only the wages-payment part, but a certain spirit and principle, to vivify anew these relations. Socialism is the next thing coming. I shrink from it in some ways, yet it looks like our only hope.

My heart is always with the people, in the thick of the struggle; I shall rejoice in anything the people do to demonstrate their contempt for the conditions under which they are despoiled. I want the arrogant money powers disciplined.

When out of a feast I eat only corn and roast potatoes for my dinner, through my own voluntary choice, it is very well and I much content,
But if some arrogant head of the table prevent me by force from touching anything but corn and potatoes, then is my anger roused.
Rapacious! I take up your challenge!
I fight, whether I win or lose, and hereby pass the feud to them that succeed me,
For I prophesy that there will never come a time when the rapacious tongue will not be heard, each age in its own dialect.

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
The rich owners and pious and distinguish’d may be well,
But there is more account than that, there is strict account of all—
What cold drop is that which slowly patters, patters, with sharpened poisoned points, on the skull of his greediness,
And go whichever way he may, it still hits him,
Though he see not whence it drips nor what it is?

You think I am sore on the plutocracy? Not at all. I am out to fight but not to insult it. When I hit I want to hit hard, but I don’t want to hit any man—the worst man, even the scoundrel—one single blow that belongs to the system from which we all suffer alike. The plutocracy has as much reason for being as poverty—and perhaps when we get rid of the one we will get rid of the other.

The male and female many laboring not shall ever confront the laboring many, with precious benefits to both—a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth, where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough—a modest living—and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities of the simple body and the simple soul.

If the moneys of the people only go plentifully for the great purposes of benevolence and education, no matter how heavy the taxes or how large the loans, they will be like bread cast upon the waters, and we shall indeed find it again after many days. After I got done with it, there wouldn’t be much wealth left in private hands, if my say was final.

But I can’t get myself into a personal boil in the matter. I’m a sort of an anarchist tramp, too.

NEXT: BEYOND MATERIAL WEALTH

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).