William Maxwell Evarts Quotes
Wealth has no source but labor
This used to be a generally accepted principle in America. It took labor to produce wealth. It could be someone else’s labor or even slave labor, but labor produced things or labor enabled us to find minerals like gold or oil. However, in modern capitalism, money itself can produce wealth by investing or yielding interest. Inventions produce wealth as do other ideas. Authors and movie producers produce wealth. Who you know can produce wealth (finder’s fees) as can knowledge.
William Maxwell Evarts, 1818-1901, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Senator (Republican, NY), Centennial Oration at Independence Hall. Philadelphia PA, July 4, 1876
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was almost 2 thousand years before there were Protestants who could develop a Protestant work ethic.
Ironically, Fitzhugh who detested socialism, held this basic socialist principle. His solution however, was that the profits were necessary for society, and therefore slavery was the solution for Blacks AND whites.
William Maxwell Evarts was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He was renowned for his skills as a litigator and was involved in three of the most important causes of American political jurisprudence in his day: the impeachment of a president, the Geneva arbitration and the contests before the electoral commission to settle the presidential election of 1876.
