On the contrary, he admits that the typical huge fortunes of America are based on the productive activities of the remarkable men who have amassed them.

The talents of such men, he says, are essential to the prosperity of the country, and it is necessary to stimulate such men to develop their talents to the utmost by allowing them to derive for themselves some special reward for their use of them; but he contends that the rewards which they are at present permitted to appropriate are needlessly and dangerously excessive, and ought therefore to be limited.

But limited by what means?
It is his answer to this question that here alone concerns us.
The means, he says, by which these rewards may be limited are ready to hand, and can be applied with the utmost ease.

They are provided by the democratic Constitution of the United States of America.

"No one can doubt, for example," he goes on to observe, "that, if the majority of the voters of the State of New York chose to elect a governor of their own way of thinking, they could readily enact a progressive taxation of incomes which would limit every citizen of New York State to such income as the majority of voters considers sufficient for him.