HERE are eight men whose aggregate possessions show a wonderful prosperity of the people, especially of these eight people: John D. Rockefeller, $135,000,000; W. W. Astor, $120,000,000; Cornelius Vanderbilt, $90,000,000; Jay Gould, $75,000,000; Henry M. Flagler, $60,000,000; Charles Pratt, $55,000,000; Wm. K. Vanderbilt, $50,000,000; John Flagler, $40,000,000; total, $625,000,000. Then comes Fred W. Vanderbilt, George Vanderbilt, William Astor, and Louis C. Tiffany, each worth $35,000,000, or worth an aggregate wealth of $140,000,000. These are followed by C. P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Andrew Carnegie, Mrs. Elliott F. Shepherd, Mrs. W. H. Vanderbilt, Henry Hilton, H. Victor Newcomb, S. W. White, Levi P. Morton, August Belmont, J. Hood Wright, and Jas. B. Colgate, each of whom is worth $30,000,000, and, when taken together, these twelve persons are worth $360,000,000. Then follows the list of those worth $25,000,000 each, whose names are as follows: Eugene Kelly, Wm. Rhinelander, John W. Mackay, Russell Sage, Theodore Havemeyer, Wm. Rockefeller, Oliver H. Payne, Robert Goelot, Ogden Goelot, Austin Corbin, A. Seward Webb, W. D. Sloane, Pierre Lorillard, Robert Chesebrough, Calvin S. Brice, G. P. Morrisini, and Henry Villard, in all seventeen, whose combined wealth is $425,000,000. These are followed by a list of nineteen names who are worth $20,000,000 each, as follows: H. O. Havemeyer, Robert Bonner, H. O. Armour, Piermont Morgan, Louis Morgan, Mrs. Bradley Martin, Louis Lorillard, Mrs. H. McK. Twombly, William C. Whitney, John Jacob Astor, Jr., W. J. Askell, the Misses Furness, John H. Starin, Darius C. Mills, Charles L. Tiffany, Anson Phelps Stokes, Henry G. Marquand, John D. Sleyback, and Henry Hart—an aggregated wealth of these nineteen persons of $380,000,000. Here are sixty persons whose wealth combined amounts to the beautiful sum of $1,930,000,000. This shows a very prosperous condition of at least sixty of the sixty-three million people of our country. The entire circulating medium of the United States is only $1,400,000,000, while sixty citizens of this country have possessions aggregating nearly a half million dollars more than the whole amount of money in circulation for the use of the entire people. Is it any wonder these great barons can control the money markets of the country, and, in controlling the money market, they dictate the price of all other commodities? In addition to the sixty foregoing named persons, there is given a list of twenty-two persons who are each worth $10,000,000, and twenty-seven who are each worth $5,000,000, and fifty-seven who are each worth $3,000,000. In all there are one hundred and sixty-six persons whose combined wealth amounts to $2,456,000,000. This is certainly very strong evidence of the prosperity of our country, especially of the list published in the Journal. The amassing of such fortunes into the hands of a few people puts into their hands a power alike dangerous to liberty and prosperity of the masses. When a few of these barons unite their wealth for any purpose, they are enabled to carry out that purpose, and, since human nature leads most persons to do that which is of greatest advantage to self, these few may not only use the power of their wealth to gratify their whims and pleasure, but they will and do use that wealth to enhance their power, and, as wealth is power, and has always been an oppressive power, when amassed in any great sums, the oppression of the masses is not difficult to account for, with such astonishing accumulations in the hands of the few.—New York Journal, 1890.