Carnegie

I recently saw some pretty astounding numbers in an excerpt from Robert Marks' "Origins of the Modern World."

In 1400, there were about 350 million people living on the earth. Of the 60 million square miles of dry land available on the planet, these folks were clustered in about 4.25 million square miles. Or about 7% of the available land. The reason, of course, is that portion of the land was most suitable for agriculture.

Today there are about six *billion* people living on the Earth and, amazingly, about 70% of us still live on that same 7% of land.

Think about that the next time you wonder why the houses in your neighborhood are so close to each other.

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A person with socialist beliefs once came to visit Andrew Carnegie was soon railing against the "injustice" of Carnegie having so much money when there was so much poverty in the world. In this man's opinion, wealth was meant to be divided equally.

In response, Carnegie asked his secretary to bring him a figure showing his total net worth at the moment. While he was waiting, Carnegie pulled an encyclopedia off the shelf.

A few minutes later his secretary entered the room, carrying the requested piece of information on a slip of paper. Carnegie took the paper, did some quick figuring with a pencil, then said to his secretary, "Give this man sixteen cents."

"I've just been looking up the world's population ... that, sir, is your equal share of my wealth."

[paraphrased from Bits and Pieces via Richard G. Wimer's Wit and Wisdom]

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WONDER for YOUR WEEK: Do we blame things on the previous generation because there's only one other choice?

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