3 182;? 00045 1450
 
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 EX L.IBRIS 
 
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 BOOKS BY PROF. JOHN C. VAN DYKE 
 
 Art for Art's Sake. University Lectures on the 
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 THE MONEY GOD
 
 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 CHAPTERS OF HERESY AND DISSENT CONCERN- 
 ING BUSINESS METHODS AND MERCENARY 
 IDEALS IN AMERICAN LIFE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN C. VAN DYKE 
 
 \v 
 
 AUTHOR OP "THE DESERT," "THE OPAL SEA," "ART 
 
 FOR ART'S SAKE," "THE MEANING 
 
 OP PICTURES," ETC.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published April. 1908
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE waited twenty years for some professor of 
 economics or properly equipped student of sociology 
 to write this book. Unhappily for my hope the econ- 
 omist seems always engaged in figuring out how man- 
 kind can get more money for less labor, and the soci- 
 ologist is absorbed in demonstrating that everybody 
 ought to be helped in some manner, by somebody, to 
 something. So at last, weary of hearing the spade 
 called a shovel, weary of being told to look There 
 when the trouble is Here, I have made a dash at the 
 subject myself, with the thought that perhaps others 
 may be led thereby to consider it more fully and more 
 scientifically. 
 
 This is not the kind of book that one writes for 
 pleasure. To talk of our national successes is more 
 agreeable than pointing out our national shortcomings. 
 Possibly that is why the orator and the writer choose 
 to enlarge upon our virtues, our energy and cleverness, 
 our possessions, our sheer "bigness." But whatsoever 
 of good lies with us we already know. Everyone tells 
 us about it until our conceit and complacency have
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 grown colossal. To start upon another tack and speak 
 of mean ambitions, low aims and positive evils is to be 
 called a pessimist, a scold, or an altogether gloomy 
 person. The reviewer demolishes you with a sentence 
 about the need of constructive rather than destructive 
 criticism, and the galled jade in the street perhaps 
 winces out something ancient about a lack of the sense 
 of humor. There is nothing pleasant in telling peo- 
 ple to 
 
 "Leave sack and live cleanly." 
 
 And yet if the man, or the nation, is ever to "live 
 cleanly" he must be told that "sack" is the main cause 
 of his uncleanliness. As I conceive the evil of these 
 American days, it lies in our ambition for mere wealth, 
 for objective possessions, for material successes. This 
 has passed of recent years into a greed of gain, and our 
 American virtue of thrift, with which no one could 
 quarrel, has turned into an American vice of avarice. 
 It has made us the wealthiest nation in the world, and 
 we pride ourselves on this success; but I have had the 
 temerity in these pages to suggest that there are other 
 and perhaps nobler successes than the accumulation 
 of wealth, and that a man, or a nation, may be rich 
 and yet signally fail of being a factor in human well- 
 being or human progress. 
 
 With what power lay in my elbow I have made a 
 "drive" at the American money ideal and the means 
 of its attainment, at business legislation, compensation,
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 and education, at our commercialized professions, at 
 the "development" of the country by the exhaustion 
 of our national resources, at the wide trail of waste 
 left by the "developers," at our modern towns with 
 their lack of stability and our open country with its 
 lack of improvement, at our false notions of money and 
 what it will do for us, at the idea that wealth will 
 insure weal, and at the commoner fallacy that the rich 
 are happier than the poor. My only regret in all this 
 is that I have not had more power and more skill in 
 wielding the driver. Beyond that I have no apology 
 whatever to make. For, in the main, the truth, as 
 many people see it, has been told, let Business say 
 what it will. 
 
 Nor shall I apologize for suggesting at the end the 
 necessity of the moral element in our national life. 
 In the final appeal the salvation of the nation, as of 
 the individual, lies in the acceptance of the Ten 
 Commandments and the gospel of love and faith. 
 They have always existed; it is safe to say they 
 always will exist. The gilded generation of to-day has 
 no substitute to offer for them. They are things of the 
 mind and the heart that cannot be bought, neither can 
 they be bribed to keep silence. In the long run they 
 will surely bring every one of us into judgment. 
 
 J. C. V. D. 
 
 RUTGERS COLLEGE, 
 January, 1908,
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. Our Prosperity. The American millions Our 
 achievements and our possessions The astounding figures The 
 enormous crops Told only in billions of bushels, in millions of tons 
 Hauling the crops to market The country gridironed with rail- 
 ways, but still not enough The wear-out of men, engines, and cars 
 And still the congestion of traffic Steamers, canal-boats, even trol- 
 leys, at work in transporting crops and goods The same working 
 overtime in the factories The wear-out of machinery New power- 
 houses required The volume of goods produced Our exports and 
 their value The yearly income of the United States The value of 
 the "plant" itself The distribution of wealth Every one gets a 
 share This indicated by the table of wages compiled by the Labor 
 Bureau And again by Savings Banks deposits And still further by 
 the increased scale and style of living Social life of the laboring 
 classes Of the better-paid or so-called " upper classes " The crav- 
 ing for amusement and excitement Money-getting and the attempt 
 to buy happiness The American belief in Money as happiness The 
 disappointment The rich more unhappy than the poor Is money 
 an undesirable commodity? The impossibility of living without it 
 The rational and the irrational pursuit of it Money madness of the 
 individual and the nation Our prosperity and our discontent The 
 richest nation and the most unhappy Our continued pursuit of the 
 golden will-o'-the-wisp 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. Business Aids. Legislation for Business Law- 
 making for the protection of Capital and Labor Their assumption 
 of the titles Their numbers in the community Protection for the 
 farmer The mill-owners and their employees Capital protected by 
 the tariff Labor protected by organization and by Contract Labor 
 laws No protection for the Professional, Personal, and Domestic 
 
 ix
 
 X CONTENTS 
 
 classes Ground between Capital and Labor Attitude of the pro- 
 fessional classes Legislation indisposed to help them Good times 
 are hard times for them Burdened by the tariff Discriminated 
 against as Labor No Contract Labor law for them Sometimes 
 "protected" in spite of protest The case of American art Perverse 
 congressional action The case of the author and the inventor 
 Allowed to collect royalties for only a few years Books and inven- 
 tions then confiscated to the State The arguments of the congress- 
 man The injustice of such discrimination The professional classes 
 "impractical" Their ideals Their neglect by law-makers Their 
 compensation 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. Wages and Salaries. The Earnings of Capital 
 What it gets and keeps Its attitude of grasp and greed Labor 
 grasping also Formation of Labor Unions to force higher wages 
 The quarrels between Capital and Labor The strikes The con- 
 sumer pays Cost of living goes up The disturbance to business 
 and social life The small numbers of organized Labor and Capital 
 Their power to annoy the larger number Their arrogance Figures 
 showing the wages of organized Labor Report of the Bureau of 
 Labor quoted The high averages for skilled labor The comparison 
 with salaries and wages paid to professional classes The small aver- 
 age salaries of professors, lawyers, clergymen, architects Arguments 
 pro and con about different costs of living The mechanic class 
 versus the professional class The distribution of wealth shows Labor 
 receiving a greater percentage than any class save Capital and the 
 Middleman 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV. The Immigrant. The immigrant in Colonial days 
 The heroic quality of the early arrivals Their Americanism The 
 present changed conditions The immigrant not now a refugee from 
 political and religious persecution He is here to make money Cares 
 nothing about our country Not always a bona-fide settler The ele- 
 ments in to-day's immigration Three-quarters of it from Southern 
 Europe and Asia The undesirable nature of the majority Tables 
 showing the constituents of immigration Their questionable value 
 to us What we can do to assimilate them Poor results through 
 education, marriage, and association The "levelling down" of the 
 nation Experience better than argument Our experience in Cali-
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 fornia, in New York, in the Middle West The influx of Jews, 
 Slovaks, and "Hungarians" A modern instance in a city near New 
 York How the immigrants "develop" the country Their labor and 
 who utilizes it Capital needs cheap labor The steamship companies 
 and their part in immigration What will Congress do to stop it? 
 Our present suicidal policy 39 
 
 CHAPTER V. Education for Business. The American idea of 
 success With the masses Success spells Money The American 
 teaching and training for money success Training the schoolchil- 
 dren Things that "pay" The same tale in colleges and universities 
 Education as a knowledge of principles passing away Colleges 
 teaching a formula of gain and turning out money-makers rather than 
 scholars Value of the older method The lasting quality of classic 
 education The permanent element of style The evanescent ele- 
 ment of facts Style worth keeping even in these days Scientific 
 and "practical" courses in colleges Elective studies fitting for 
 money-making Scientific and Agricultural Colleges Industrial 
 Training Schools Their enormous increase Business Colleges The 
 Wharton School of Finance and Economy Trend of the universities 
 toward Business courses Commercializing of education Shown in 
 the students in professional schools Tables and figures The pro- 
 fessions as uncapitalized industries 52 
 
 CHAPTER VI. Commercialized Professions. The professions and 
 pecuniary rewards Going into professions for money The ministry 
 and the professor's chair Medicine and dentistry invaded by money- 
 makers "All that the traffic will bear" The maxim of the high- 
 wayman The law passing into a money-making occupation The 
 lawyer-promoter The influx of the Jews into these professions 
 Commercialized journalism The old and the new journalism Yel- 
 low journalism Its influence for evil The destructive quality of the 
 modern newspaper The degeneracy of the magazines following the 
 press The ten-cent magazines Purely business ventures Book pub- 
 lication Books that "pay" and those that do not The counting- 
 room versus literature Everything by the dollar standard Illustra- 
 tion, art, sculpture, architecture, the theatre, all affected by it Also 
 the college lecture-room and the laboratory Pure and applied 
 science 64
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII. " Developing" the Country. Everything comes out 
 of the land The richness of our land Its abundant resources Our 
 inheritance and its improvement by us Development good and de- 
 velopment bad Farming, stock-growing, horticulture, town build- 
 ing, construction of roads, canals, bridges, harbors, the reasonable 
 use of resources, all commendable "Development" by destruction 
 The settler a Vandal Land "boomers" Havoc and spoliation 
 The organized companies that flay the land Natural resources that 
 once used can never be used again Their wanton destruction The 
 waste of the forests Consequent destruction of water in the rivers 
 Increase of desert area Change of climate thereby The prospective 
 timber famine The miner The Forty-Niners and the hydraulic 
 miners Present-day mining The consumption of coal How long 
 is our petroleum and iron to last? The "practical" men Business 
 and what it destroys Conservation of natural resources President 
 Roosevelt's call to the governors of the States Action demanded to 
 stop the destruction 79 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. Waste. The appalling waste of materials The 
 National vice Fifty per cent, of the forest timber allowed to rot on 
 the ground How the lumberman works The waste of the miner 
 Low-grade coals and ores not used Cutting out the tenderloin and 
 throwing away the rest of the carcass Gold, silver, zinc, copper, 
 iron-mining, in the same reckless way Our agricultural methods 
 Destruction of the land by cropping without renewal Our low yields 
 of cereals compared with other countries Baron von Liebig and Mr. 
 Morrill on American agriculture The destruction of the farms still 
 going on The "abandoned" farm a worked-out farm Waste with 
 what is taken out Recklessness of employees Waste in manu- 
 factures And in distribution by the middlemen Extravagance of 
 the rich And of the poor The poverty of the poor caused by waste 
 A phase of "development" All classes in America are extrava- 
 gant 94 
 
 CHAPTER IX. The Business Town. The city recruited from the 
 country The best and also the worst classes come to the city 
 Adding to the viciousness, bad taste, and hideousness of the city 
 The building of the town The attempt at the city beautiful Plans 
 for improving our large cities Some of our attractive cities Note-
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 worthy signs of progress But as yet little more than a promise The 
 origin of our towns Their lack of plan Expediency and business 
 considerations rule Expansion of the average town The " block "- 
 planned city The sordid quality of it The ragged outskirts The 
 average city in appearance Its pretension The unlivable quality of 
 our cities The restless, shifting character of the inhabitants Busi- 
 ness crowding into the resident districts The dirt and disease The 
 clatter and roar And the signs Outrages of the advertiser The 
 annoyance of signs The better classes driven out of town Chasing 
 the resident into the country with trolleys and telephones Once 
 more the signs The savagery of civilization and the barbarism of 
 business What we have given back to the land And our apologies 
 for it 106 
 
 CHAPTER X. The Millionaire, Trustee. The general misunder- 
 standing about money Wealth and money distinguished apart 
 Gold, silver, and the promise-to-pay The worthlessness of all of them 
 if not in use The common belief about the millionaire's money The 
 miser of fiction and the millionaire of fact Wealth itself not wealth 
 unless used "Withdrawing" money from the common store The 
 popular notion of enjoyment by indulgence Money cannot be used 
 without benefiting others The illustration of a Pacific railway The 
 money of Mr. Rockefeller and where it is The Duke of Buccleuch 
 and his 3,000 tenants He a land-holder for their benefit The man of 
 wealth a trustee of wealth only If he uses his wealth he must benefit 
 others as well as himself Mr. Carnegie and his Gospel of Wealth 
 Philanthropy The trusteeship, good and bad, illustrated Giving 
 away money and its perils Mr. Rockefeller and his gifts to the 
 University of Chicago Mr. Carnegie and his gifts of libraries A 
 supposed Carnegie railway into South America Material versus in- 
 tellectual and moral growth The millionaire's income and what he 
 does with it The Carnegie Foundation as illustration The value of 
 the millionaire to the community 119 
 
 CHAPTER XI. The Struggle for Money. Why people desire it 
 The power that money gives The good intentions of the average 
 millionaire The bad intentions of some of them The corrupt use 
 of the money power The predatory wealthy Mr. Roosevelt's war on 
 trusts and railways Government prosecutions The millionaires who
 
 XIV CONTENTS 
 
 have not been investigated Hunting out the sinner rather than the 
 sin The millionaire a much-harried individual Those who would 
 take his place The money ambition of youth Getting money by 
 hook or by crook The disreputable businesses that people follow for 
 money Getting something for nothing Gamblers, speculators, pro- 
 moters Common thievery Sacrificing health, friends, principle, 
 common decency for money What is lost Developing only one side 
 of our natures The mental and the moral neglected The gratifica- 
 tion of appetites The physical in us over-indulged What we have 
 done in intellectual things Our famous men all captains of industry 
 or practical scientists The moral phase of us Our abnormal develop- 
 ment in business 136 
 
 CHAPTER XII. Discontent. Making money for the sake of having 
 "a good time" The common ambition Living without work and 
 what it means Excesses and what they cost in health Enjoyment 
 and satiety The higher standard of living Getting rich and enjoy- 
 ing one's money The average case The "moving to town" The 
 social education of the children Fashionable life and its pleasures 
 Extravagance and indulgence The emptiness of it The endless 
 clatter of plate and knife Ennui and suicide The wealthy not all 
 foolish The sensible use of wealth The simple lives of many mil- 
 lionaires Happiness in simple things Discontent of both rich and 
 poor The middle class in the community Why the professional 
 people are more content The difficulties they experience The 
 responsibility for the country upon them Contentment a subjective 
 quality Money will not buy it Right development . . . 150 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. Conclusion. This is not a book of constructive 
 criticism Pointing out where we fail A realization of our present 
 condition needed Our appeal to legislation Ridiculous law-making 
 Contempt for authority Our lawless character Some of the laws 
 demanded Wealth and happiness not attained by legislation The 
 need of more moral sense The salvation of the individual Virtue its 
 own reward The struggle for possessions The aspirations for noble 
 things The death in the harness A mental and moral uplift needed 
 But we are not to be despaired of A new prosperity in character 
 and a greater success with sound public sentiment The necessity for 
 continued agitation 163
 
 THE MONEY GOD
 
 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 OUR PROSPERITY 
 
 WITH the beginning of this year of grace, 1908, it 
 must be apparent to all mankind that we are the richest, 
 and consequently the most prosperous, nation on the 
 face of the earth. Everyone in America has known 
 this for a long time, and with cheerful complacency 
 admits it on every possible occasion ; but now, thanks 
 to our far-flung statistics, Europe, Asia, and the islands 
 of the sea begin to lift up their eyes to us and admire the 
 breadth and depth of our flesh pots. It is true, we have 
 recently had a financial flurry, and have experienced a 
 temporary stringency in the money market; but that 
 merely emphasizes our wealth, merely signifies that 
 we have not currency enough to carry on the vast 
 volume of our business. It proves us more marvellous 
 than ever. And while the world stands with mouth 
 agape, the American millions keep heaping up in un- 
 thinkable numbers, and the American millionaire con- 
 tinues to come out of the West, like an Efreet of the 
 Jinn out of the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, bring- 
 
 3
 
 4 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 ing under his cloak dresses, jewels, slaves, wealth in 
 abundance. The story of our "bigness" is quite over- 
 whelming. Yet the end is not in sight. We are not at 
 the top of the ladder, because we have still more won- 
 derful things to do before we pass out in a blaze of 
 glory; but we are high enough to look down on the 
 envy of those below. For the moment we are in the 
 sunlight, and those who would gaze upon us must do 
 it with shaded brows. 
 
 Thus might some kindly satirist among us recount 
 our achievements and our possessions, but with the 
 perhaps unexpected result that his gentle irony would 
 fail as irony and become merely the plain truth. For, 
 as a matter of fact, we are the richest nation in the 
 world, we are in a material sense the most prosperous, 
 we are something of a marvel. An optimist would find 
 support for almost any large assertion he might venture 
 in the statistics published by the general government. 
 The bulk of our growings, our diggings, our makings 
 and our doings generally is enormous. The crops this 
 last year may be a little "short" of what they were the 
 year before, but they are still countable only in billions of 
 bushels, in millions of tons. The corn crop alone was 
 something like two and a half billions of bushels, the 
 wheat crop over six hundred million bushels, the oats 
 crop over seven hundred million, barley and rye nearly 
 two hundred million, potatoes nearly three hundred mil- 
 lion, hay over sixty million tons, tobacco nearly seven 
 hundred million pounds, cotton over ten million bales.
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 5 
 
 The necessity of hauling these products to the mills, 
 or the seaboard towns, explains in part the close grid- 
 ironing of the country with railways. There are more 
 miles of railway in the United States than in all the 
 countries of Europe put together; but still not enough. 
 They have proved insufficient to handle the wheat, 
 corn, oats, cotton, in connection with mine products 
 and general merchandise. For hah* a dozen years 
 there has been a car famine not enough freight cars 
 to supply the needs of shippers; and for the same 
 period there has been a locomotive famine not enough 
 engines to haul the trains. Everything that could be 
 run at all has been pressed into the service; but the 
 demand (until very recently) has been beyond the 
 supply. Not only that. There proved to be in- 
 sufficient tracks, road-beds, bridges, stations, depots, 
 terminals. Millions upon millions have gone into 
 improvements and extensions; but still not enough. 
 Then, too, until a few months ago, every available hand 
 on the roads has been busy; every hour, even into the 
 night and on Sunday, has been utilized. Men and 
 machines have both been wearing out trying to meet 
 the demand. In almost every city traffic has been 
 congested. The railway men have said continually in 
 the last few years that they would welcome a decrease 
 in traffic, so great has been the pressure. They have 
 not been able to keep up to the pace, to live up to the 
 prosperity. 
 
 The same tale has been brought in from other depart-
 
 6 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 ments of transportation. Coal, iron, copper, lumber, oil, 
 cattle, wool, raw materials and finished products have 
 crowded the capacity of the river boats, lake steamers 
 and ocean liners; the state canals, at one time half 
 abandoned, have been pressed into the service; and even 
 the trolleys have been set at the hauling of goods and 
 chattels. The product has been too huge to handle 
 save in an inadequate way. The mails were burdened 
 with orders and directions about goods in transit, the 
 telegraphs and telephones were struggling with mes- 
 sages day and night, agents and brokers were travelling 
 up and down the country, like ants from a hive, hurry- 
 ing along the tremendous output. The figures and 
 reports of the various common carriers the millions 
 of tons carried and the millions of dollars that stood 
 for gross earnings were almost unbelievable. There 
 has never been such another pull and haul in the his- 
 tory of the world, such another volume of traffic, as 
 the United States has had to deal with in the last half 
 dozen years. 
 
 The same feverish haste, the same working over- 
 time, the same struggle to keep up, were apparent in 
 the mills and factories. They have all been running 
 under high pressure, wearing themselves out, fatiguing 
 the very steel and stones by night-and-day friction. 
 One item on the yearly balance-sheet of corporations 
 has grown to enormous proportions. It is "deprecia- 
 tion" the charging off for wear and tear on ma- 
 chinery and " plant." New power and new machines
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 7 
 
 have had to be put in frequently, for the best-tempered 
 materials that may be made cannot stand perpetual 
 motion. Additions, supplementary power-houses, more 
 factories, have been erected from one end of the country 
 to the other. Chimneys higher than.anything put up be- 
 fore have been reaching into the upper air, and towns 
 that were once quiet and sleepy have been made noisy 
 with whistles and bells and sooty with clouds of smoke. 
 
 Again, the volume of goods produced last year by 
 this great grind of wheels and wear of humanity is 
 something quite astounding. Stated in money it is in 
 the neighborhood of eighteen billions of dollars 
 nearly as much in produce- value as that of any half dozen 
 countries of Europe put together. The great bulk of 
 this manufacture is consumed here in the country; 
 but there is enough sent out to foreign lands to pay 
 all our debts to them and still leave a balance of trade 
 in our favor of five hundred millions a year. If to 
 these sums should be added the value of the annual 
 output from the soil and the mines, in lumber, oil, 
 live stock, and other products not included in manu- 
 factures, we should really have staggering figures. 
 
 And yet this is but the income of the United States 
 that which comes in each year not the value of the 
 vested interests, not the value of the "plant" itself. 
 In trying to estimate what factories, mills, bridges, 
 railways, steamships, are actually worth, figures become 
 bewildering and confusing. When one talks about 
 billions he conveys no meaning to the average mind.
 
 8 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 The sum is really inconceivable. The farm lands 
 alone, now in use in the country, are estimated at over 
 thirty billions of dollars; and the figures that should 
 stand as the equivalent of our cities, towns and villages, 
 can only be guessed at. It is really unthinkable. The 
 American boast that no nation in the history of the 
 world has ever equalled us hi the abundance of our 
 possessions is not modest; but it is true. 
 
 Here is wealth indeed and of a very substantial kind. 
 Nor is it wealth for the few and poverty for the many, 
 as some would have us think. In its distribution 
 every one in the community gets a share. Perhaps it 
 is not always an equitable share, as the sharer sees it. 
 Those who are identified with neither capital nor labor, 
 nor yet again interested in agriculture or trade those 
 who are living on a salary in a profession or clerical 
 position are likely to get tails and ears for their share; 
 but, as a rule, they do not make complaint. The 
 larger part goes to capital, labor and agriculture; and 
 the steadiest income of all is perhaps that of the middle- 
 man the business man who handles goods on com- 
 mission or buys and sells as a dealer or merchant. 
 The latter is neither producer nor manufacturer. He 
 is a mere handler of money or merchandise; but he 
 takes toll at every turn, and eventually the consumer 
 pays all the charges. The distribution of wealth is so 
 general, however, that the consumer usually has the 
 means wherewith to pay. There are inequalities, to 
 be sure, as we shall see hereafter; but, generally speak-
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 9 
 
 ing, no one suffers, no one starves or goes cold or is 
 shelterless. The material needs are well enough sup- 
 plied with all. 
 
 That the distribution of wealth is general is indi- 
 cated by the tables of wages compiled by the gov- 
 ernment. There has never been a tune when such 
 wages, fees, salaries, and stipends of various kinds 
 have been paid for work done. That the laboring 
 classes are getting a good deal more than enough to 
 live on is indicated again by the reports of the savings 
 banks. The roll of depositors keeps increasing, the 
 savings keep mounting up each year. The money in 
 the United States per capita is an interesting item in 
 statistics perhaps, but it proves little in the matter of 
 general distribution. The savings banks give more 
 reliable data, but better even than these is the knowl- 
 edge common to all of the increased scale and style of 
 living in America. The prosperity of the country is told 
 by the houses and homes maintained by the masses. 
 
 That there has been with what is called " the laboring 
 classes" a substantial increase in property is not to be 
 denied. New homes have been established in every state 
 and territory; and within them what were once thought 
 luxuries are now plain necessities. Those comforts which 
 are spoken of by economists as so necessary to a high 
 civilization, such as gas, electricity, telephones, baths, 
 books, pictures, are within the reach of all, even the un- 
 skilled day-laborer. Society too, with cap and bells, has 
 come to the factory contingent as well as to the smart set.
 
 10 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Functions that correspond to pink teas take place in the 
 tenement-house districts as on the avenues. Dress, 
 food, drink, music, after their kind, are necessities ; and 
 an "atmosphere" of style is promoted by an abundance 
 of furniture and draperies. The array of carpets, art- 
 squares, lounges, easy-chairs, curtains, china, bric-a- 
 brac and piano, to be found in the home of the average 
 mechanic, is quite astonishing. 
 
 With the better paid classes the business men, pro- 
 moters, bankers, and the like living is of the same 
 type, only more so. Every thing is on an exalted and 
 somewhat reckless scale of expenditure. There is too 
 much house, too much furniture, too much dress, too 
 much food, too much everything. It is ostentatious. 
 Autos and horses, yachts and private cars, are, of 
 course, in evidence; and a restless craving for amuse- 
 ment or excitement is everywhere. Amusement is, in- 
 deed, the demand of all classes and conditions. Money 
 seems always forthcoming for the theatre, the opera, 
 for travel, for autos, for balls, for dinners. From the 
 lowest to the highest there is a persistent and con- 
 tinuous attempt at buying pleasure, at getting some- 
 thing more for their money than a mere living. The 
 greater comforts now obtained, the present ease and 
 convenience of living, as compared with what the 
 fathers endured, do not seem to have quite satisfied 
 them. And perhaps there is apparent a shade of 
 disappointment about this. 
 
 For man, woman, and child in this prosperous
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 11 
 
 country of ours have been brought up in the belief, 
 time out of mind, that money is synonymous with 
 happiness; and if you have the money you cannot 
 choose but have the happiness also. It is something 
 of a blow then to wake up dully to the realization that 
 we have the one and yet have no more of the other 
 than formerly. There is no doubt about our pos- 
 session of the money; there is no doubt about its wide 
 distribution among us. Those who think the rich 
 are growing richer and the poor growing poorer imag- 
 ine a vain thing. Nearly all the classes have more 
 than formerly; nearly all are living more luxuriously, 
 with greater conveniences and refinements of civiliza- 
 tion; and nearly all are more or less unhappy more 
 unhappy than when they were poorer, less unhappy 
 perhaps than they will be when they are richer. 
 
 What! People with money unhappy! It is meant 
 perhaps that the underpaid and overworked employees 
 in the factories are unhappy, but not the millionaires 
 and capitalists? On the contrary, the employees, as a 
 class, are neither underpaid nor overworked, nor are 
 they more unhappy than their employers. It is not 
 the poor with us that are peculiarly unhappy, but the 
 very rich. 
 
 Such a situation would seem to be easily remedied. 
 The poor man would like the rich man's place; he will 
 exchange. What says Voltaire: 
 
 " Misere pour misere je prefere la votre."
 
 12 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Yes; but that is only to shift the burden, and the new 
 bearer does not go on care-free. Besides, the wealthy 
 man finds he has responsibilities to his friends, part- 
 ners, associates, society at large. He is the trustee of 
 wealth, not its absolute owner; and he will not be 
 allowed to fling his trusteeship to the winds and his 
 money to the dogs, even were he so disposed. Perhaps 
 his responsibilities, coupled with the abuse, the mis- 
 representation, the envy of the mob, have not a little 
 to do with his unhappiness ; and perhaps the poor man 
 who has few responsibilities, few envious friends, and 
 few hounding enemies, is the happier on that account. 
 
 Is money then an undesirable commodity? And is 
 commercial prosperity to be considered provocative 
 of unhappiness ? Certainly not ! In a physical sense, 
 no person or people at the present day can be very 
 happy without them. Starvation and cold were once 
 thought aids to glory, but no one ever pretended that 
 they were pleasure-giving. Physical well-being is a 
 necessity of mental well-being. Moreover, the pursuit 
 of commerce, trade, or manufacturing is just as honor- 
 able as any other calling; and the getting of a com- 
 petence for one's self or one's family is just as much 
 of a duty to-day as it ever was. In other words, the 
 rational pursuit of wealth is commendable, wholly 
 meritorious, entirely good for the individual and the 
 country. But 
 
 When the individual goes money-mad, when he sees 
 gold dollars in the bottom of his coffee-cup, stock
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 13 
 
 certificates in his beefsteak, and heaven in the bottom 
 of a bank vault, when he abandons family, friends, and 
 country to run amuck at morality, honor, and com- 
 mon decency, stabbing right and left in his mad rush 
 for wealth, what hope is there for happiness ? It is 
 time to call for an ambulance and a straight-jacket. 
 When a nation becomes monomaniacal, making unto 
 itself a golden image which it falls down before and 
 worships, when it thinks and acts and legislates for 
 money only, when it turns the arts and sciences into 
 machines for gain, and scorns the higher education 
 and morality of life, when it plunders and tramples 
 under foot the most beautiful country in the world, 
 when drunk with its own power it revels in gluttony 
 and becomes boastful of its own selfishness, when it 
 forgets the goodly heritage of its history, forgets its 
 ideals and faiths and beliefs and starts upon a career 
 of greed and grasp, harm who it will or may, again, 
 what hope is there for happiness? The pace is one 
 leading to destruction. 
 
 But is it not true that we are the richest and most 
 prosperous nation on the face of the earth? Yes; in 
 a material sense. And for that reason are we the un- 
 happiest nation? Not necessarily. And yet, as a 
 matter of fact, are we not, as a nation, singularly rest- 
 less, discontented, unhappy? In the midst of plenty, 
 what mean these wrangles and tangles, these snarlings 
 and quarrelings, about wealth and wages, about mo- 
 nopoly and franchise, about rebate and bribery, about
 
 14 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 loot and graft? Why is it that no American who 
 loves his country, can pick up a newspaper without 
 finding columns of things that either make his blood 
 rush to his head with anger or to his cheeks with shame ? 
 Why is it that there is more hatred between man and 
 man, between class and class, here than in those "effete 
 monarchies" of Europe that our politicians talk about 
 so glibly ? Why is it with all our prosperity that there 
 are strikes and mobs and bomb-throwings in the land, 
 and anarchy, communism, and socialism in the air? 
 If money will not exorcise these demons from us, then 
 what avails it? Is it perchance the very money that 
 brings them to us ? The jewel in the hilt of the King's 
 Ankus drew a trail of blood after it; it brought only 
 misery to its possessor. Shall we say as much for our 
 yellow gold? 
 
 Once more, no. We cannot be happy with money, 
 and we cannot, in these civilized days, be happy without 
 it or its equivalent. It is the extravagance of the 
 money worship the belief that money alone is om- 
 nipotent that produces disappointment, dissatisfac- 
 tion, discontent. The rational pursuit of it, the normal 
 use of it, its recognition as a factor in human well- 
 being, are borne in upon everyone; but to regard it 
 as the only thing needful is sheer madness. This, 
 indeed, is so true that it is trite, so obvious that it 
 seems hardly worth saying. Besides, it has been said 
 over and over again for the last three thousand years. 
 Everyone nods assent to it. It is the experience of the
 
 OUR PROSPERITY 15 
 
 ages. But when was it ever heeded ? What people or 
 nation ever profited by it ? Is there any hope that this 
 western civilization of ours will ever try to practise 
 the preaching? 
 
 Certainly the prospect is not now very favorable. 
 We have outrun all the nations of the earth in our 
 pursuit of the golden will-o'-the-wisp. The pace we 
 have set leaves others breathless and ourselves ex- 
 hausted; but there is no pause. We boast we are the 
 greatest This and the richest That, and in Europe 
 they have come to speak of our land as Dollarica in- 
 stead of America; but we are not satisfied. We are 
 still pursuing. Is it not true that we have eyes and 
 hands for the yellow glitter only? Is it not true that 
 we are money-mad?
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BUSINESS AIDS 
 
 IN a nation so devoted to business as the United 
 States it is not surprising to find that the bulk of the 
 legislation centres about business things. Matters of 
 morality, conduct, social relationship, may vary with 
 the locality, and the larger legislative bodies do not 
 bother with them, as a rule. They are turned over to 
 the ordinance-making municipality to do with as the 
 necessities of the case demand. If there is no great 
 financial interest involved, and no large body of voters 
 behind it, a desirable measure is perhaps not made 
 into a law at all, but is enforced by what is called 
 "public opinion." 
 
 It cannot be supposed that the general government 
 would enact statutes about keeping the Sabbath day 
 holy, or sending children to school, or making compul- 
 sory the number of hours a day a man may labor. 
 The function of government, we are told, is not to 
 regulate individual conduct. It makes laws of uni- 
 versal application only. This is as right in theory as 
 it should be in practice; but, unfortunately, the legis- 
 .Jative bodies do make laws of special application, and 
 
 16
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 17 
 
 they make them largely in the interest of that indi- 
 vidual known as the Business Man. There is law- 
 making for professional people too for artists, writers, 
 inventors, professors, ministers, physicians but it is 
 often unsought and undesirable law-making, often 
 against, rather than for, its supposed beneficiaries. 
 
 In dispensing legislation, the law-givers seem to have 
 in mind principally two classes, which may be de- 
 scribed in a general way as Capital and Labor. These 
 classes, if liberally inclusive, would make up the bulk 
 of the thirty millions or more who work in the United 
 States every worker being either employer (Capital) 
 or employee (Labor). But there is no such inclusion 
 in the legislative mind. Certain representatives of 
 the trade unions have arrogated to themselves the whole 
 title and right to Labor because they happen to be 
 organized; just as certain groups of Capital have taken 
 it upon themselves to speak and represent all vested 
 interests because they happen to be incorporated. 
 The division of occupations, according to the govern- 
 ment statistics of 1900, was about as follows: 
 
 Agricultural pursuits 11,000,000 
 
 Manufacturing and Mechanical pursuits .... 7,000,000 
 
 Trade, including clerks, brokers, etc 5,000,000 
 
 Professional, Personal and Domestic service . . 7,000,000 
 
 30,000,000 
 
 It might be thought that in the making of laws, 
 specifically for the getting and keeping of money,
 
 18 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 each one of these classes would receive consideration 
 in proportion to its numbers; but such evidently is 
 not the thinking of the average legislator. The farmer 
 (Agricultural pursuits) gets certain concessions be- 
 cause he is a political factor. Under the tariff the 
 larger part of his produce is protected from foreign 
 competition. He can usually charge almost any prices 
 he chooses for food products; and, because of the lack 
 of competition, people have to pay them. There is 
 some complaint against his occasional extortions ; but, 
 as a rule, the farmer is considered worthy of his hire 
 a man to be encouraged. His worst antagonist is 
 not the housekeeper, but the mill-owner. It is the 
 latter individual who is continually agitating for the 
 removal of the tariff from "raw products." He wants 
 the farmer's wool, hides, and cereals at a cheaper price 
 that he may make them up into cheaper goods and 
 sell them at the old high price. In other words, he 
 wishes to give the farmer less, give more perhaps to his 
 workmen, and take more himself. 
 
 The most influential class in the community is un- 
 doubtedly these mill-owners and their wage-earners. 
 This is the Manufacturing and Mechanical class of 
 our list which, with clerks and factotums, means some- 
 thing like seven million people. To Capital much has 
 been conceded in legislation because it furnishes the 
 sinews of trade. It builds the mill and factory, spins 
 the cotton, digs the mines, rolls the iron, pipes the oil. 
 Taking some risk in this once wild-cat country of ours,
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 19 
 
 it was originally thought wise that it should receive 
 special protection. So the protective tariff was enacted, 
 whereby it was made practically impossible for com- 
 petition to interfere with the charge imposed upon the 
 domestic consumer. That wisdom (since turned into 
 folly) still continues, and Capital now has a franchise 
 of selling to us its own products on practically its own 
 terms. 
 
 Labor, possessing an organized vote, has received of 
 recent years very considerate treatment at the hands of 
 both political parties. Indeed, one might gather the 
 impression, from the discourses of campaign orators or 
 the writings of certain economists, that the man in the 
 mill was the only laboring man in the States. As a 
 matter of fact, the latest statistics (1907) give to or- 
 ganized Labor (as represented by the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor, a merger of almost all the labor 
 unions) about two million members. The remaining 
 five millions who pursue manufacturing, not being 
 unionized, are variously regarded by Labor as "scabs" 
 and "loafers," or, what is nearly as bad, "plutocrats" 
 and "blood-suckers." The two millions, being banded 
 together, and with good red blood in the veins of their 
 heads, by dint of strikes, boycotts, threats, and open 
 violence, manage to drive all the rest of the workers 
 before them; and in fact they so terrorize the whole 
 country that they get almost anything they want. 
 Practically, no man who is not in the unions is allowed 
 to work in the trades. It is possible for "scab" labor
 
 20 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 to continue on its unclean and unwholesome way, but, 
 to repeat, it is not "practical." One does not care to 
 be ostracized or stoned or dynamited for the privilege 
 of working. Local competition is thus eliminated; 
 and as for foreign competition, it is sought to exclude 
 it by the Contract Labor laws no one being allowed 
 to import foreign labor to take the bread and butter 
 out of the mouth of the home worker. Once more, 
 then, we have a condition wherein Labor holds a 
 franchise to sell to us its skill, or its awkwardness, on 
 practically its own terms. 
 
 The Professional, Personal and Domestic classes, in 
 connection with the Trade class of brokers, clerks, 
 and book-keepers, get no special legislation of advan- 
 tage to them nothing except that which is guaranteed 
 under the Constitution to all alike. In politics they 
 are regarded as a negligible quantity, though there 
 are some twelve millions of them. They are not keen 
 partisans; their vote is scattering, and some of it is 
 not cast at all. The members of this class usually live 
 on a wage, a fee, a salary a fixed stipend of some 
 sort. The stipend is usually small and does not vary 
 much from generation to generation. Prices of com- 
 modities go up, but the salary of the minister, the 
 physician, the soldier, the engineer, does not go up 
 in proportion. Sometimes when there is a drop in 
 prices, owing to hard times or over-production, the 
 teacher, the clerk, or the artist profits by the reduction 
 in his weekly bills; but when tunes are prosperous, he
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 21 
 
 is usually at his wits end trying to keep even with the 
 butcher and the grocer. Generally speaking, the whole 
 class lies in between the upper and the nether stones 
 and is subject to pulverization. It is not Capital be- 
 cause there is no great wealth in it; and it is not Labor 
 because it does not take off its coat, neither does it 
 belong to a union. In socialistic meetings its mem- 
 bers are sometimes referred to as "the drones in the 
 hive," and occasionally it is suggested by some redder 
 radical than usual that the country would be as well 
 off if they were all drowned or shot. 
 
 Many of this professional or salaried class, though 
 they draw their salaries regularly enough, are not pri- 
 marily money makers. They are working because they 
 are in a tread-mill and cannot get out, or because they 
 like their occupation better than money, or because 
 they feel they are needed in certain places, or because 
 they want to educate or uplift or somehow help man- 
 kind. This, according to popular standards, is a 
 fatally erroneous way of regarding life. If one wants 
 his share of this world's goods he must fight for it, or 
 at least make himself so disagreeable that others will 
 give place to him. There are many in the professions 
 who do make themselves heard disagreeably enough; 
 but they are not in the majority. The class, as a class, 
 still stands aloof, gets little, and says little. Of course, 
 the legislator is not inclined to do much for it. He 
 can afford to neglect it because it is not organized, nor 
 unionized, nor incorporated; nor does it use its power
 
 22 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 at the polls as it might. It does not attempt to force 
 an increase of stipend. It takes what it can get and 
 thanks the Lord it is not less. 
 
 To such people the tariff is not a help but a burden. 
 Professional men have nothing to sell but their brains 
 or their skill, and the tariff was never designed to help 
 either of them. For years the teacher, the physician, 
 the engineer, the writer, the artist, have paid abnormal 
 prices for food and clothing, loyally supporting the 
 tariff to their own loss, because they believed it was 
 helping the laboring man, putting manufactures upon 
 their feet, promoting the general good of the whole 
 country. During the recent period of great prosperity 
 they have been experiencing adversity. It has been 
 difficult for them to live and keep out of debt, so high 
 has been the cost of living, so very slight has been the 
 advance in salaries received. 
 
 If this class is absolutely discriminated against by 
 the action of the tariff discriminated against because 
 it is not Capital it is even worse treated because it is 
 not Labor. The Contract Labor laws are not in force 
 to protect professional people from outside competition. 
 A foreign-born steam-fitter, mason, printer, or plumber 
 may not land on American soil with a contract to work 
 in his pocket without being subject to deportation, and 
 his employer to penalty under the law. Importation 
 of foreign labor is forbidden. Our own laborers must 
 have the work. But French or German professors 
 come, as they please, to our colleges and universities,
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 23 
 
 English lecturers galore talk from the American plat- 
 form, English writers and novelists appear in the Amer- 
 ican magazines, European inventors, scientists, phy- 
 sicians, ministers, opera singers, actors, keep arriving 
 here to do work under contract; but no one raises a 
 voice of protest. Indeed, the professional people here 
 welcome them. They would scorn to place anything in 
 the way of a free interchange of ideas, advancement in 
 knowledge, and progress in the respective professions. 
 Moreover, they are self-reliant enough not to wish any 
 protection. No doubt, they would make more money 
 if European ideas and their originators were excluded 
 from the country; but they wish no such benighted 
 policy in their behalf. 
 
 Yet occasionally a professional man finds himself 
 protected in spite of protest. There is, for instance, 
 a tariff on art which is supposed to protect the American 
 artist by keeping out foreign competition foreign 
 pictures, for example. But that is precisely what the 
 American artist does not want. For twenty-five years 
 he has been asking the different political parties to 
 remove that tariff. He wants foreign art, ancient and 
 modern, to come into these United States, not only as 
 a means of self-education, but as a great help in edu- 
 cating his American constituency. Again and again 
 has this argument been presented to Congress; but 
 the tariff is still in force. There has been flung back 
 the insincere answer that you cannot tax the poor man's 
 dinner pail and not the rich man's pictures. Every
 
 24 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 congressman who has hidden behind that dinner-pail 
 knows that art is not consumed like food, that the rich 
 man owns the pictures only for a day, that he lends them 
 freely to public exhibitions; and that eventually they 
 go (by bequest) to public museums, where they are for 
 the education and the enjoyment of all alike. The 
 artist is not benefited by the tariff, for you cannot 
 compel people to buy American books and pictures as 
 you can American beef and bread; and the public is 
 the loser by just the amount of the excluded art. 
 
 Tariffs and labor laws are harmful to the profes- 
 sional classes both positively and negatively. They are 
 costly to maintain for others; they are ruinous when 
 maintained for themselves. And there is discrimina- 
 tion of a most unjust nature against certain profes- 
 sional classes, owing to further perverse congressional 
 action. Let me illustrate that. A poverty-stricken 
 author, working in the traditional garret, writes a book 
 which is published. He competes with all the world 
 of literature in the past, in all the languages dead and 
 living; but he is not protected by any tariff in the sense 
 that a shoemaker is protected in making his shoe or a 
 watchmaker in making his watch. The printer, the 
 bookbinder, the paper man who furnishes the paper 
 for his book, are protected well enough. You cannot 
 publish any foreign set or cast books in the United 
 States, or bring in any paper or cloth without paying a 
 duty-penalty. But the author is allowed to shift for 
 himself. He can better Shakespeare and Goethe or
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 25 
 
 starve in his garret. He is not, however, left entire 
 master of his book and his labor. Legislation does 
 not help him, but it does not completely neglect him. 
 For it declares that eventually he has no right what- 
 ever in his own book. 
 
 This is the way it is done. The Constitution of the 
 United States guarantees to every one the inalienable 
 right of possessing and holding continuously, in fee 
 simple, all kinds of property both real and personal. 
 The capitalist cannot be ousted from his factory or 
 home any more than the farmer from his farm, or the 
 blacksmith from his shop. The shoemaker has an in- 
 alienable right in his shoes, the silk manufacturer in his 
 silks, the furniture-maker in his furniture, They and 
 their heirs and assigns can do what they please with 
 their own, indefinitely and for all time. But not so 
 with the author. He has no inalienable right in his 
 book. Legislation grants him the privilege of a copy- 
 right. He can collect a royalty on it for a certain 
 number of years only. After that it is "confiscated to 
 the state," made public property. Any one can re- 
 print or publish it as it pleases him, without remunera- 
 tion to the author, and without even his consent. 
 
 Another poor wretch, the inventor, is in the same 
 boat with the author as regards the treatment of his 
 property. He does not, cannot own his own inven- 
 tions. Legislation graciously gives him a patent for 
 a number of years, and then throws down the bars and 
 allows the public to walk into his preserve and help
 
 26 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 itself. Of course there are reasons given and excuses 
 made. The perfervid congressman gets on his feet 
 to say that there is "no such thing as property in an 
 idea," It is not tangible, cannot be picked up, and 
 hence is non-existent. Admirable! But, somehow, 
 there is enough "property" found about it, or in it, to 
 turn over to the public later on. And again, we are in- 
 formed that it is in the interests of the public that the 
 people should have good literature, and plenty of it, 
 cheap; that it should have the benefit of labor-saving 
 inventions and time-saving machinery. Admirable 
 again! By the same token it would be a good thing, 
 no doubt, that the public should have shoes and hats 
 cheaper; but we have not heard it advocated that the 
 general government should break into the mills of the 
 shoemaker and the hatter and confiscate their goods. 
 Everything comes cheaper when payment is evaded. 
 The advanced socialist has some such notion in his 
 head. He advocates government confiscation of all 
 property. Such a course would no doubt be destruc- 
 tive, but at least it would not discriminate among those 
 it would destroy. 
 
 Of course, the weak side of the professional classes, 
 as a politician or business man would put it, is that 
 they are "impractical." They should combine, or- 
 ganize a professional union, quarrel, wrangle, and 
 disturb the public peace like the rest of the unions. 
 Then they might force legislation at the muzzle of the 
 ballot, and make arrogant demands for themselves and
 
 BUSINESS AIDS 27 
 
 against every one else. But they have no idea of doing 
 any of these things. They rather scorn such actions. 
 Some of them are even foolish enough to talk about 
 the moral aspect of things; and to conjure with such 
 words as order, decency, and justice. All of which is 
 very unbusiness-like, and possibly very stupid. For 
 what now avails the plea of a body of surgeons in the 
 public hospitals that it would be the proper thing to 
 allow them to import, free of duty, certain foreign- 
 made instruments, that it would benefit both surgeon 
 and patient, and be an advantage to an unpaid as well 
 as a non-paying class? What now avails the request 
 of the architects that they be allowed to import, free of 
 duty, photographs of European architecture for use in 
 their city building? Who listens to the college pro- 
 fessor when he asks for duty-free maps, or rare texts 
 for class-room use in the teaching of his pupils? The 
 legislator knows very well that these men are not 
 political factors, and that they can be "turned down" 
 with impunity. 
 
 Naturally enough, the "impractical" twelve millions 
 can make little more money than is sufficient to keep 
 them from want. Capital comes first, Labor next; and 
 the clerk, the physician, the minister, the librarian, the 
 school teacher, get what is left on the plate. Indeed, 
 the average fixed salary of this class is so much smaller 
 than is usually supposed that it is worth considering 
 in a separate chapter.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 
 
 IN speaking of the compensation received by the 
 different classes in our business and professional world, 
 perhaps it will not be necessary to recite the earnings 
 of Capital. These are days of trusts and corporations 
 and multi-millionaires, and every one in this country 
 is convinced, beyond the possibility of any different 
 conviction, that Capital realizes handsomely on its in- 
 vestments. This may be accepted not only as convic- 
 tion, but as statistical fact. However others may fare, 
 Capital generally manages to look after itself. That 
 it helps others while helping itself is true; that it can- 
 not choose but share the benefit of its earnings with 
 the community at large we shall see hereafter; but 
 that in its initial impulse it means to get the largest 
 part for its own exclusive use and power is also 
 beyond dispute. It is not by nature philanthropic. 
 It gains what it can and holds it as long as it can. 
 
 This attitude of grasp and greed is just as marked 
 with Labor as with Capital. The labor unions were 
 organized ostensibly to further fraternal association, 
 
 28
 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 29 
 
 education, trade conditions of one kind and another; 
 but in reality they were formed to force higher wages, 
 more compensation. It is naively thought by some 
 people that the higher wage thus forced comes out 
 of Capital; but, of course, the extra wage-payment 
 is tacked on the price and eventually paid by the con- 
 sumer. 1 The consumer always has to pay. But about 
 that Labor neither knows nor cares. It wants its 
 money, and it wants it in an increasing ratio or else it 
 will strike. And strike it does with increasing regu- 
 larity. In the United States in the year 1900 it struck 
 more than seventeen hundred times. The strike is usu- 
 ally accompanied by disaster to all parties concerned. 
 And it should be noticed that it concerns all parties. 
 If Capital and Labor were two isolated individuals that 
 could go over into the next county and hack at each 
 other's throats without disturbing the community at 
 large, no one would have much cause of complaint; 
 but the trouble is they are always quarrelling in public 
 places, making a disturbance in the street and on one's 
 door-step. Everybody is involved, business cannot go 
 
 1 After the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 was settled, by 
 Presidential interference, coal advanced $1.25 a ton to the 
 consumer. After the Beef Trust was "busted" through 
 governmental action, beef advanced in price immediately. 
 If the Standard Oil Corporation is dissolved by the Federal 
 Courts (hypothetically a violation of the rights of the State 
 of New Jersey which incorporated it), and if the interstate 
 railways are taken over by the government (hypothetically 
 a violation of the Constitution of the United States which 
 guarantees their right to hold property), we may look to 
 paying higher prices for oil and transportation.
 
 30 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 on, the ordinary pursuits of life are badly jostled, there 
 is no peace for either mind or body. 
 
 If the situation were put down in figures it would 
 read something like this : Organized Labor with us can 
 muster something over two million members; incor- 
 porated Capital possibly two hundred thousand mem- 
 bers. For the sake of argument, let us concede two 
 millions to Capital and five millions to both. There 
 are some eighty or ninety millions of people in the 
 United States, but let us discard all but the thirty 
 millions of actual workers casting out the women and 
 children with the lame, the halt, and the blind. Our 
 figures now indicate that the five millions of Capital 
 and Labor, with their various quarrels and bickerings, 
 are keeping twenty-five millions in continuous hot 
 water. It is the differences of these people that are 
 not only turning the business world topsy-turvy every 
 few weeks, but the professional and social world as 
 well. They practically control the cost of living through- 
 out the country, and every time they come to blows the 
 cost is materially enhanced. In itself that is sufficient 
 to disconcert the average individual in the community. 
 He does not know where he stands. Add to this the 
 unhappiness that is bred of these quarrels, the state of 
 unrest, the mental strain of living in a never-ending 
 jangle; and it is not to be wondered at that the suffer- 
 ing community in between should finally exclaim in its 
 wrath: "A plague o' both your houses !" 
 
 There is no satisfying either party. No sooner is a
 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 31 
 
 monstrous trust formed than a monstrous union crops 
 up to meet it. The leeching and badgering of the in- 
 termediate public then goes on with greater celerity than 
 ever. Capital, thanks to the tariff, has for years been 
 taking more than its share of profits; and now Labor, 
 by virtue of its organized strength, is taking more than 
 its due of wages. Of course, Labor denies this, and 
 does not even care to discuss the matter. It makes 
 demands, and if they are not conceded it makes trouble. 
 This is all of a piece with the arbitrary raising of prices 
 by Capital, or the equally arbitrary insistence of a 
 farmer-legislature that railways shall carry them and 
 their produce at rates of farmer-manufacture. Money- 
 makers of all kinds soon arrive at a stage of arrogance; 
 and that Labor is a money-maker can be easily proved 
 by statistics. 
 
 Figures giving general averages of wages are not 
 always satisfactory guides. For instance, during the 
 Steel strikes in Pittsburg in 1892 a period of depres- 
 sion the evidence before the Congressional Committee 
 that afterward investigated the strike and its causes, 
 showed that the lowest wage paid for unskilled labor 
 in the Carnegie Steel Works was $1.40 a day, and that 
 the best wage paid for skilled labor (that is, the "roll- 
 ers") was $15.00 and $16.00 a day. It is difficult to 
 average the wages of the thousands in the mills who 
 are in between such extremes as these, and still give 
 one an adequate idea of what Labor in the Steel in- 
 dustry is really receiving. However, the government
 
 32 
 
 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 bureaus with their expert statisticians have analyzed 
 and modified the averages of the Labor wage, and their 
 figures 1 will prove suggestive as regards certain trades 
 at least. The trades that have organized unions and 
 belong to the American Federation of Labor are pur- 
 posely chosen in order to show that these persistent 
 strikers and disturbers of commerce are receiving, as a 
 class, larger wages than any other wage-earning or 
 salary-getting class in the community. Fractional fig- 
 ures of hours and wages are both omitted for conven- 
 ience of statement. 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 HOURS 
 PER WEEK 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGES 
 PER HOUR 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGE3 
 PER WEEK 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 56 
 
 $ .30 
 
 $16.80 
 
 Bricklayers 
 
 46 
 
 62 
 
 28 52 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 48 
 
 .40 
 
 19.20 
 
 Gas-fitters 
 
 46 
 
 51 
 
 23.46 
 
 Stone-cutters .... 
 Painters 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 .52 
 .38 
 
 23.93 
 
 17.86 
 
 Paper-hangers .... 
 Plasterers 
 
 48 
 46 
 
 .41 
 .60 
 
 19.68 
 27.60 
 
 Plumbers 
 
 46 
 
 .54 
 
 24.84 
 
 Steam-fitters .... 
 Newspaper Compositors, 
 Newspaper Linotypers . 
 
 47 
 47 
 47 
 
 .50 
 .51 
 .56 
 
 23.50 
 23.97 
 26.32 
 
 For men employed in factories or mills, the wage 
 varies with the skill or hazard of the work; and, as a 
 1 "Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor," No. 71, July, 1907
 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 
 
 33 
 
 rule, is perhaps lower than for men working outside 
 the factories. 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 
 HOURS 
 
 WAGES 
 
 WAGES 
 
 
 PER WEEK 
 
 PER HOUR 
 
 PER WEEK 
 
 Cabinet-makers . . . 
 
 55 
 
 $ .26 
 
 $14.30 
 
 Stone-cutters .... 
 
 56 
 
 .28 
 
 15.68 
 
 Iron-moulders .... 
 
 56 
 
 .32 
 
 17.92 
 
 Pottery-dippers .... 
 Glass-blowers .... 
 Steel-rollers 
 
 44 
 42 
 66 
 
 .54 
 .90 
 83 
 
 23.76 
 37.80 
 
 54 78 
 
 
 
 
 
 In transportation the same high average of wages is 
 maintained for skilled Labor. 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGES 
 PER DAY 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGES 
 PER WEEK 
 
 1 Locomotive Engineers (1904) . 
 Locomotive Firemen . . . 
 Conductors 
 
 $4.10 
 
 2.35 
 3.50 
 
 $24.60 
 
 14.10 
 21.00 
 
 Trainmen 
 
 2.27 
 
 13.62 
 
 Section Foremen 
 
 1.78 
 
 10.68 
 
 Telegraph Operators . . . 
 
 2.15 
 
 12.90 
 
 It is now worth while to institute a comparison be- 
 tween these figures of the Labor Bureau which stand 
 
 1 Strong, Social Progress, 1907, is the authority for the 
 item of Locomotive Engineers; but the estimates for these 
 railway employees are hardly high enough, for they do not 
 take into account the extra wages allowed them for working 
 overtime. All the other estimates are taken from the "Bul- 
 letin of the Bureau of Labor," No. 71, July, 1907.
 
 34 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 for the wages of Labor, and such figures as may be 
 arrived at as the average compensation in the pro- 
 fessions. Unfortunately, the latter are not easily as- 
 certained. The Labor Bureau does not furnish them 
 the government not having as yet shown any great 
 concern about the wages of artists, lawyers, doctors, 
 and clergymen. In estimating them, one can give only 
 the general consensus of opinion of people in each 
 profession. Those outside of what are called "the 
 learned professions" gather the impression that law, 
 for instance, is extremely well paid, because they hear 
 that So-and-So, who is more of a promoter and cor- 
 poration broker than a practitioner at the bar, makes 
 $100,000 a year. But these large incomes are few at 
 best, are confined to the very large cities, and are cut 
 down in the general average by the thousands of lawyers 
 between Maine and California who do not perhaps 
 make $1,000 a year. In taking the general average of 
 the incomes of lawyers throughout the country, as we 
 have the wages of unionized Labor, perhaps $1,500 a 
 year would be a high estimate. New York lawyers, not 
 one but dozens of them, declare that it is too high, even 
 for New York City. Just so with the salaries of college 
 professors. Three estimates have been made. Presi- 
 dent Pritchett of the Carnegie Foundation, who esti- 
 mated only the higher grades of colleges and professors, 
 says the average is $1,550 per year. The late President 
 Harper of the University of Chicago made it out $1,470 
 per year. President Moffat of Washington and Jeffer- 
 son College, who averaged four hundred and eighty-one
 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 
 
 35 
 
 salaries in denominational colleges, gives it as $808 per 
 year. I have no alternative but to average these three 
 estimates, and say $1,276; and yet I am quite sure that 
 even this is too high a figure. 
 
 As for the incomes of physicians, clergymen, authors, 
 and artists we again have in mind some friend in one 
 or the other of the callings who is reported as making 
 $10,000 a year; but such people are to be counted upon 
 one's fingers. There are exceptionally high wages paid 
 to "top men" among the ranks of Labor too; but we 
 are now dealing with the average wages of the average 
 man, not alone with the salary of the star performer. 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 SALARY 
 PER YEAR 
 
 AVERAGE 
 SALARY 
 PER WEEK 
 
 1 Lawyers 
 
 $1,500.00 
 
 $28.84 
 
 College Professors .... 
 Tutors and Instructors . . . 
 2 School Teachers (per month) . 
 Clergymen 
 
 1,276.00 
 600.00 
 47.97 
 700.00 
 
 24.53 
 11.53 
 11.99 
 13 46 
 
 
 1,000.00 
 
 19.23 
 
 1 Dentists 
 
 1,200.00 
 
 23.07 
 
 Librarians 
 
 700.00 
 
 13 46 
 
 Journalists 
 
 800.00 
 
 15.38 
 
 1 Architects 
 
 1,000.00 
 
 19.23 
 
 Authors 
 
 500.00 
 
 9 61 
 
 Artists . 
 
 500.00 
 
 9.61 
 
 
 
 
 1 People in these professions have to pay for office rent, 
 which should properly be deducted from the income if we 
 are to arrive at their average salaries in comparison with the 
 other professions or with skilled Labor. 
 
 1 Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 
 1905.
 
 36 
 
 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Even in the field of less skilled and unskilled Labor 
 the unions manage to gain for their men more money 
 than the same time and effort bring outside of the 
 organizations. 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 
 HOURS 
 
 WAGES 
 
 WAGES 
 
 
 PER WEEK 
 
 PER HOUR 
 
 PER WEEK 
 
 1 Laborers (trades) . . 
 
 56 
 
 $ .20 
 
 $11.20 
 
 1 Laborers (streets) . . 
 
 49 
 
 .22 
 
 10.78 
 
 1 Hod-carriers .... 
 
 47 
 
 .32 
 
 15.04 
 
 The figures that may be conservatively placed as the 
 wages of unorganized Labor, or the wages of semi- 
 professional people such as book-keepers, clerks, and 
 domestics, are about as follows: 
 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGES 
 PER DAY 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WAGES 
 PER WEEK 
 
 * Laborers (farms) 
 
 i 10 
 
 3pi . 1O 
 
 OR 70 without board, 
 WV.tO , I903 
 
 8.00 
 9.00 
 
 5.00 with board 
 10.00 
 
 Clerks in stores (men) . . . 
 Clerks in offices 
 
 Domestics (men) 
 
 Book-keepers 
 
 
 1 "Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor," July, 1907. 
 * Strong, Social Progress, 1907.
 
 WAGES AND SALARIES 37 
 
 There are stock arguments for the laborer and his 
 wage versus the professional man and his salary, which 
 do not vitally concern us at this moment. I mean the 
 arguments, pro and con, as to which is the more arduous, 
 hand work or head work; about time required in edu- 
 cation for the work; about hours of work; about 
 different costs of living in different occupations. The 
 janitor in the basement gets higher wages than the 
 teacher in the school overhead. One argues his burden 
 of responsibility or his long hours, the other his cost of 
 education. The college professor complains that he 
 has to spend so much of his salary in clothes, books, 
 travel; while the bricklayer, who gets about the same 
 wages as the professor, complains that he cannot work 
 every week in the year. Every one in a trade, profes- 
 sion, or occupation of any kind thinks, naturally 
 enough perhaps, that his job is the most difficult and 
 the least remunerative in existence. Some one else 
 seems always getting the cream while the deponent 
 grows thin on skimmed milk. 
 
 There is much to be said on both sides of this ques- 
 tion, but the debating schools have said it too often 
 for repetition here. Besides, the figures in the above 
 tables were given for another purpose, namely: to 
 suggest that organized Labor, whether rightfully or 
 wrongfully, whether by earning capacity or by organ- 
 ization, whether by just desert or unjust intimidation, 
 gets and applies to itself as large, if not a larger wage 
 than any other working class in the community than
 
 38 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 any other class in all the community, save only Capital 
 and the Middleman. That Capital has more, receives 
 more, and keeps more, seems to be the great grievance 
 of Labor. There is enough and to spare for both. 
 Neither of them is in want. But the spirit is not to be 
 stilled by such considerations. Each seeks a little 
 more, and in doing so precipitates a quarrel. The 
 commercial and social discontent, of which every one 
 in this country must be more or less conscious, can be 
 almost directly traced to this quarrelling over who shall 
 have the larger share. Money can always be relied 
 upon to breed hatred and enmity. 
 
 But of that more anon. The present chapter will 
 have served its purpose if it suggests the distribution 
 of money, who gets it, and how much of it is gotten. 
 Capital and Labor can hardly claim that they fare 
 badly in the distribution. They have a coadjutor who 
 also helps himself liberally. This person is the Mid- 
 dleman, who acts as the broker or trader in almost 
 every transaction and takes a percentage of the profit. 
 All three of them are enlisted under the banner of 
 Business, and we shall see hereafter that Business in 
 America is not only king but emperor and pope as well.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE IMMIGRANT 
 
 IN the heroic days of the Colonies and the Republic 
 the immigrant was, rightly enough, invited and wel- 
 comed to our shores. He was a refugee from political 
 and religious persecution, a man down-trodden and 
 oppressed with no opportunity to better his condition; 
 he was a seeker of life and liberty, or at least a soldier 
 of fortune, who came here prepared for hardships, for 
 struggles, for poverty. He was then an altogether ac- 
 ceptable addition to the community one who could, 
 and did, stand shoulder to shoulder with our own 
 people, and fight red men within and white men with- 
 out for the maintenance of the country. He fought 
 for and won a home here, married among us, became 
 one of us ; and when he died he left children who were 
 thoroughly American in spirit. 
 
 But all that has been changed of recent years. The 
 present-day immigrant does not, as a rule (the Russian 
 Jews excepted), complain of religious or political per- 
 secutions at home. He is not seeking life and liberty; 
 he is not oppressed. As for the country he comes to, he 
 has only the vaguest notion of upholding and sup- 
 39
 
 40 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 porting it; and perhaps not the slightest notion of ever 
 becoming an integral part of it. He comes here with 
 an entirely different idea from that. Someone has told 
 him that there was gold to be picked up in the streets 
 in America, that it was a great place for getting 
 rich quick, and the government made it a boast that 
 poverty was non-existent in the land. He has come 
 over with the thought of getting the gold, of becoming 
 a millionaire, and then returning to his Italian or 
 Istrian shore, a modern Pizarro boasting of his posses- 
 sions. He knows little about either this country or its 
 people, and cares less; what he is after is our money. 
 
 Of course, this statement must be immediately quali- 
 fied, because there are immigrants and immigrants. 
 The majority of the recent arrivals are not good citizens 
 here, there, nor anywhere. Their country parted with 
 them for its own good. But there is a minority con- 
 tingent of exceptional quality. No one would think of 
 classing, for instance, the Germans, Swedes and Nor- 
 wegians, who have settled in the Northwest, as undesir- 
 able immigrants. On the contrary, they have made 
 excellent farmers and stalwart, conservative citizens. 
 Any and all the immigration coming from the north of 
 Europe (Russia with its provinces, and the Jews, ex- 
 cepted) may be characterized as a very acceptable 
 class. The English, the Scotch, the Irish, the Scandi- 
 navians, the Dutch, the Germans, are, in degree, allied in 
 customs, faiths, ideals, sentiments. They amalgamate, 
 intermarry, and carry on the North-of -Europe traditions.
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 41 
 
 They are the kin of those who originally settled Amer- 
 ica, and by birth are, in a measure, to the manner born. 
 Let them come. We have Americans, with two hun- 
 dred years of native ancestry behind them, who are 
 not their equals mentally, morally or physically. 
 
 But what about the miscellaneous mobs from the 
 south of Europe and Asia that have been descending 
 upon us during the last decade or more the mobs that 
 do not go to the farms, but gather in the cities, in the 
 factory towns, and about the mines ? In the year 1905 
 we admitted 1,026,499 immigrants. Of this number 
 276,948 came from Northern Europe, and were pre- 
 sumably of the desirable class; 749,551 came from 
 Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the islands of the 
 sea; and were just as presumably of an undesirable 
 class. The larger elements in the undesirables have 
 been summarized as follows: 
 
 Croatian and Slovenian 35,000 
 
 Bulgarian, Dalmatian, Servian, etc 8,500 
 
 Hebrew and Greek 142,000 
 
 Italian 94,000 
 
 Japanese and Korean 16,000 
 
 Lithuanian 18,500 
 
 Magyar 46,000 
 
 Polish 102,500 
 
 Russian, Ruthenian, Roumanian 26,000 
 
 Slovak 52,000 
 
 Syrian, Turkish, and Armenian 8,500 
 
 It must be apparent on its face that such elements 
 as these, coming from lands that hold wholly different
 
 42 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 views from our views, and have wholly different in- 
 stitutions, standards of living, and national ideals from 
 ours, could never prove acceptable citizens here in 
 America. Indeed, there are few who even attempt to 
 defend such immigration, save on the score of cheap 
 labor. Mr. Ernest Crosby, in the Arena, has told us 
 that physically these hordes will help out our hollow- 
 chested, nervous race, and improve us that way. "From 
 the purely scientific standpoint of breeding, we have 
 every interest to admit the sturdy farm-hand just as we 
 import the Percheron horse or the Southdown sheep." l 
 But, granting the possibility of human beings having 
 their physique improved by being bred like cattle, 
 what then ? Are nations made great by barbaric brawn 
 of arm and muscled backs ? Is there no mental, moral 
 or social element needed ? There must, it would seem, 
 be some homogeneity among the people, some rallying 
 point of blood or faith or principle or common welfare, 
 if unity would be attained. To breed and interbreed 
 different and undesirable elements, thinking that the 
 best in each will finally survive and leaven the product 
 for nationality and a noble race, is as fatuous as to 
 suppose that a good omelet may be made by beating 
 up a half-dozen bad eggs. What can and will be pro- 
 duced is a nation of mongrels a thoroughly worthless 
 omelet. And bad blood will tell just the same as good 
 
 1 For the reverse of this, the diseases that immigration 
 brings to us, read the article in the North American Review, 
 December 21, 1906, by Dr. Thomas Darlington, President 
 of the Board of Health of New York City.
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 43 
 
 blood. Biology has proved the lasting quality of 
 heredity. Unto the fourth and fifth generation the 
 stupidity of the Russian, the cut-throat instinct of the 
 Sicilian, and the moral obliquity of the Balkan hordes. 
 Centuries have not, centuries will not, change the low 
 cunning of the Jew, the treachery of the Greek, and the 
 rascality of the Armenian. The less we have to do with 
 them the better for us. 
 
 Nor is there any trust to be placed in the idea of 
 lifting them up to our standard by association, by 
 marriage, and by education. They do not rise per- 
 ceptibly, but the American goes down to meet them. 
 We are no nobler than our most ignoble constituency. 
 To talk of assimilating such a mass as comes in each 
 year, to think of making them like ourselves by a proc j 
 ess of public schooling for the children, is to shoot 
 arrows at the sun. Education may improve any given 
 endowment, but it will not create a new endowment. 
 People are what they are born as regards natural gifts; 
 and education will not beat it out of them. Besides, 
 the newcomers object to having their birth-gifts beaten 
 out of them, to being born again. They do not want 
 to be assimilated, do not want to become American. 
 They want our gold ; that is all. We shall not change 
 their nature nor their character to any marked degree. 
 The camel that was allowed to put his head under the 
 Arab's tent did not turn into an Arab; but he con- 
 tinued to occupy the tent to the owner's undoing. 
 
 But better than any argument or theory about this
 
 44 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 class of immigration is the experience we have had 
 with it. The Pacific coast has been heard from about 
 the inacceptable Asiatic in no uncertain terms. Some 
 academic people in the Eastern States have spoken of 
 the feeling against Asiatic immigration as "a mere 
 prejudice"; but they list not whereof they speak. The 
 , Californian knows that the Oriental is diametrically 
 opposed to Western institutions; there is, and can be, 
 no common ground of union, no brotherhood. The 
 people who live in the coal regions could, if they would, 
 tell somewhat concerning the undesirability of the 
 hordes of Lithuanians, Poles, and Slovaks who work in 
 the mines. They keep the community in a state of 
 anxiety in times of peace, and in a state of terror in 
 times of strike. Their value is that of dynamite, and 
 they are always, more or less, "dangerous." That they 
 will ever make good citizens is an idea that few have 
 the hardihood to entertain. Again, the Atlantic coast 
 cities have had an all-sufficient experience with the 
 Sicilian, the Armenian, and the Jew. With 750,000 
 Hebrews in New York City, 1 and enough Sicilians to 
 keep the police on the alert from dawn to dawn, there 
 is little use of talking about absorption and assimila- 
 tion. Indigestion and nausea are more appropriate 
 because more truthful terms. 
 
 1 According to the Jewish Year-Book, there are more 
 Jews in New York City than in Vienna, Berlin, London and 
 Jerusalem put together. It is the greatest hive of Jews in 
 the world, there being over a million within twenty miles of 
 the City Hall.
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 45 
 
 As for the experiences of the smaller cities along the 
 Eastern coast, perhaps I may be allowed to recite that 
 of a town under my immediate observation. The city 
 
 of B is one of the older towns near New York and, 
 
 up to a few years ago, was in possession of a somewhat 
 staid but very respectable population of about twenty 
 thousand people. It was not what is called a "lively" 
 town until the coming of the trolley. With that there 
 came an invasion of foreigners collectively known 
 as "Hungarians" something of a libel, by the way, 
 on a spirited and brave people. The newcomers, vari- 
 ously estimated as from three to six thousand in num- 
 bers, were a mixed horde, coming originally from South- 
 ern Europe, east of the Adriatic, and arriving in B 
 
 as a part of the immediate overflow from Greater New 
 York. They did not come all at once, but in recurring 
 waves which continued, still continue, to beat upon the 
 town. Each wave as it came in naturally found its 
 level in the lower or slum portions of the city, finally 
 settling in the tenement-house districts. There, 
 crowded in rooms by the dozen, and sleeping, eating, 
 living in a barbaric, unsanitary, and unhygienic way, 
 these people soon proved to be something of a public 
 nuisance, as well as a menace to the public health. 
 Thanks to employment readily obtained in the factories 
 of the town, men and women alike were able to get de- 
 cent wages; but there has resulted from this no pro- 
 portionate decent living on the part of the invaders. 
 They still swarm like rats in crowded quarters, and
 
 46 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 raise their small children in the gutter. More recently 
 some shrewd money-makers have discovered that 
 houses, rentable at about ten dollars a month, would 
 be acceptable to the "Hungarians," and so the city is 
 now witnessing the blotching of its streets with rows of 
 hideous little brick structures, all built alike and all 
 mean and sordid-looking even before occupancy. 
 
 That the "Hungarians" are reasonably happy in 
 their quarters is probable; but what about the city, 
 county, and state upon which they are quartered? 
 What benefit are they to the community in which they 
 live ? They do not speak English, they know nothing 
 of our laws, manners or customs, they own to no al- 
 legiance, assume no responsibility, perform no public 
 service, pay no taxes. To educate their children the 
 public schools have been doubled, to keep them amused 
 the saloons, dance halls, and peep-shows have been in- 
 creased, to hold them within the law the courts have 
 had to work overtime. On week days they do what they 
 can to Utter the streets with all kinds of refuse; on Sun- 
 days they do what they can to harry the outlying coun- 
 try. The men go forth with guns to kill every sort of 
 bird or beast they may meet with; and the women 
 tear down and carry away every fruit, flower, and shrub 
 they can lay hands upon. In their own land, of course, 
 they would not venture to do such things, but this being 
 the land of liberty, they think they may do as they 
 please. And apparently they think aright. 
 
 "But," says the economist, "they make trade, they
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 47 
 
 spend money in the stores and thus help the whole 
 community." The theory is better than the practice. 
 They have been followed to B by a school of shark- 
 like Jews who have set up shops in the slums, and it is 
 from the Jews that they buy the bare necessaries of life. 
 The Jews are just as bad as the "Hungarians," just as 
 undesirable. They are all of them intent upon getting 
 money, sending it back to Europe, hoarding it, or 
 slipping away with it. They have no notion whatever 
 of helping the country while helping themselves. They 
 have come into the land for the same reason that a 
 drove of cattle breaks into a clover patch to get the 
 clover. To imagine that they will benefit the patch 
 in any way is altogether foolish. 
 
 "But," interposes the economist, "they furnish 
 sinews for the factories, mills and mines ; we need their 
 labor. There are not enough people in the country to 
 do the work. Besides, it is cheap labor." Precisely! 
 We are now drawing nearer to the moving cause 
 of things "getting warmer," as the children say. 
 Cheap labor for whom? Why, for one of the two 
 parties that seem to have everything done for them in 
 this country of ours. This time it is Capital that wants 
 to make "just a little more money." It can be made 
 faster by employing the newly-arrived immigrant than 
 the native American, so Capital is in favor of immigra- 
 tion. Labor, of course, does not agree. It is not in 
 favor of immigration; but Capital and Business be- 
 tween them have their way about it. They even have
 
 48 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 apologists who sit down and figure out for us that the 
 immigrant is a better bargain, not only for them but 
 for the country, than the native-born, because the latter 
 requires twenty-one years to raise, while the immigrant 
 comes in already "raised." This figuring upon human- 
 ity and the cost of raising it, as one would upon pigs or 
 sheep, is once more noteworthy in passing, because it 
 quite reflects the spirit of the times. And the argument 
 is considered excellent, too, from the commercial stand- 
 point. Of course, if you are silly enough to talk about 
 an intellectual or an ethical point of view, you must not 
 be surprised if Business shrugs its shoulders and turns 
 away. 
 
 Finally, there is the complacent person of small ex- 
 perience who tells us that "the United States is big 
 enough for all," and that the immigrant is needed to 
 "develop the country." The word "develop" has a 
 familiar sound ; and those of us who have seen this land 
 smitten hip and thigh in the name of "development," 
 for the past forty years, know very well what it means. 
 There is no necessity of inviting the immigrant here to 
 help on the destruction, for the American has been and 
 is sufficient unto himself to do his own flaying. The 
 immigrant accelerates the pace, for those who are out 
 at the elbows are always more destructive than anyone 
 else; but he is not to be unduly blamed, since the 
 native set him the example and pointed the way to the 
 quarry. We shall see hereafter who is primarily re- 
 sponsible for the wasting of our forests, mountains and
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 49 
 
 prairies, the pollution of our lakes and rivers, and the 
 sowing of the land with board shanties, wire fences and 
 telegraph poles. The immigrant despoils, defiles, and 
 makes town and country hideous enough, in all con- 
 science; but there were others who did it before him 
 did it in the name of Business, too. 
 
 Are we right, then, in supposing that the ones who 
 chiefly profit by the immigrant from Southern Europe 
 and Asia are the capitalist and the business man the 
 mill-owner, the mine-owner, the contractor, the rail- 
 way people? It would seem so. The farmer does not 
 want hun, the professional and clerical classes have no 
 use for him, he is anathema to Labor, organized or un- 
 organized, he is persona non grata to the ten millions of 
 immigrants already arrived, and who are now anxious 
 enough to have the door closed. Who wants hun, then, 
 if not Capital as represented by the owners of railways, 
 mills and mines ? It is answered that Capital does not 
 bring the immigrant here; that it is forbidden to do so 
 by the Contract Labor law. Quite true; and yet 
 equally true is it that the great god Capital has as many 
 avatars as Vishnu, and each incarnation may be ad- 
 justed to help, if not reflect, the other. It is not the 
 mine owner, nor the mill-owner, nor the railway that 
 is immediately responsible for the importation of the 
 immigrant, but a mutual friend and customer of theirs, 
 the steamship man. 
 
 The transatlantic steamer lines find that the carry- 
 ing of immigrants at ten or twenty dollars a head is
 
 50 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 very profitable; so they have their agents scattered 
 through Europe, who not only distribute highly colored 
 and misleading literature about this country, but use 
 personal solicitation 1 to induce immigration. They 
 paint gay pictures of this land of plenty, and tempt the 
 poor, the ignorant, and the credulous to sell their small 
 belongings for passage money and start for America on 
 a venture. When they arrive here (after being penned 
 like pigs in the steerage for two weeks), nine out of ten 
 of them are without means to keep them a month, some 
 of them are old and decrepit, some are even insane. 
 These latter are often deported, flung back upon their 
 native land, with no means and no redress. Of course, 
 the steamship companies cannot be expected to have 
 any soul about such misfortunes. And, of course, they 
 have no care whatever about the land to which they are 
 bringing these unfortunates. At ten dollars a head they 
 would fill this country with rattlesnakes and hyenas 
 almost as quickly as with Slovaks and Greeks. There 
 can be no sentiment about such things. The president 
 of any one of the steamship companies would tell you 
 that it is "purely a matter of business." So it is; but 
 a plain-spoken person would call it very disreputable 
 business. 
 
 The unwillingness of legislators to do anything that 
 will hurt Business is primarily responsible for the con- 
 tinued coming of the immigrant. Congress has it 
 
 1 This is forbidden by United States statute, but the law 
 has always been a dead letter.
 
 THE IMMIGRANT 51 
 
 within its power to carry out the ideals and traditions of 
 this country, to continue the Anglo-Saxon race and its 
 domination here, to continue its thrift and decency and 
 general uprightness. It also has within its power, by 
 its spirit of commercialism or indifference, to allow the 
 whole genius of the people to be changed by inter- 
 marriage, to allow a mixed and mongrel posterity to 
 follow the present possessors, to allow the destruction 
 of the family, the country, and the government by the 
 inevitable friction of alien and uncongenial elements. 
 The immigrant, like the tariff, ought to be revised or 
 abolished ; but will it be done ? Probably not at present. 
 So long as Business can utilize the unskilled labor of 
 one Slovak, Congress will admit him, and allow five 
 Hebrews or Greeks, whose labor no one can utilize, 
 to come in with him. It is not the first time in history 
 that a nation has caught at the spiggot and leaked at 
 the bung-hole.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 
 
 THE American idea of what constitutes success is 
 not so well typified in what the parents are as in what 
 they hope the children will become. The older people 
 are usually frank enough to admit that they have failed, 
 but the new generation has splendid promise in its eyes ; 
 and there is the consoling thought that it will succeed, 
 that it will win. 
 
 Succeed in what? What is it that the average Amer- 
 ican cares to win? Is it honor, esteem, the love of 
 mankind? Is it scholarship, right conduct, virtuous 
 living, decent dying? Is it perhaps the happiness of 
 others, the welfare of the state, the glory of country and 
 race? There are those, to be sure, who seek such 
 things. Noble ambitions, thank Heaven, are still to 
 be found among us. But it would be idle to con- 
 tend that the few who aspire to the stars, were more 
 than a very small minority of our people. Every one 
 knows that success with the great masses spells money. 
 It is money that the new generation expects to win, 
 and it is money that the parents want them to win. 
 
 52
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 53 
 
 The boy will make it, and the girl, if she is not a 
 goose, will marry it. They will get it in one way or 
 another. 
 
 If this were not born in the blood, it would be driven 
 into the head by our process of education. For what 
 the children may miss at home is made up to them in 
 the schools. Twenty per cent, of the present population 
 of the United States is now in the public schools. In 
 1905 this percentage meant something like sixteen 
 million children of eighteen years of age and under. 
 Many of these school-children are presumably not old 
 enough to select their own studies; but public opinion 
 sees to it that the popular ideal is upheld and that they 
 are taught "practical things." The old-fashioned 
 notion that education was something of an accomplish- 
 ment, something worth having for its own sake, seems 
 to have almost disappeared. The self-made man, 
 whose name is legion, rather sneers at the whole thing. 
 He had no "book learning" and yet "succeeded," and 
 if his children are to have it, then it must be of a kind 
 that will "pay." What is education good for if it does 
 not "pay" ? 
 
 It is not surprising under such pressure, and with 
 "practical men" sitting on the school boards, that all 
 language should become a moribund study, and litera- 
 ture and history should be shelved for stenography or 
 book-keeping or banking. That which is mere "cult- 
 ure" or mental training is not now desirable when com- 
 pared with that which will lead directly to pecuniary
 
 54 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 reward. So year by year the older studies pass away, 
 giving place to new, until at last we have manual and 
 industrial training in the public schools that children 
 may learn to use their hands and be able to fashion 
 salable things almost before they know how to read or 
 write or cipher. 
 
 It is the same tale higher up. The colleges and 
 universities at one time cultivated the humanities for the 
 sheer love of learning. Their primary object was to 
 make the scholar in the exalted sense of the word. 
 Learning was then a knowledge of principles, not mere 
 useful information or some petty trick of thought or 
 hand whereby money was to be made. For a long 
 time the technical and professional schools which pre- 
 pared for an occupation, were apart from the university 
 proper. They are so yet in measure; but more and 
 more each year the university is forgetting its traditions 
 and is teaching a formula of gain turning out money- 
 makers, not scholars. 
 
 And yet there is still something to be said for the 
 older education, still something of abiding worth in the 
 classic languages, in philosophy, in literature, in history, 
 in art. They contain, perhaps, no facts of present-day 
 importance, nothing that could be turned at once into 
 wealth. There is, for instance, no pecuniary value at- 
 taching to the facts in the Iliad, the Divine Comedy or 
 Faust. Again there is no scientific value attaching 
 to the histories of Herodotus or the Meditations of 
 Marcus Aurelius, or even the plays of Shakespeare.
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 55 
 
 As for the arts of past ages, many of them are dead 
 to us in some respects. We do not know, for in- 
 stance, whether the "Venus of Milo" is a Venus or a 
 Victory, we are entirely at sea regarding the originals 
 of many of Rembrandt's portraits, and the religious 
 significance of Italian art, what it meant as worship, is 
 now practically a closed book to us. The facts of all 
 these things, the histories they told, the practical pur- 
 pose of their original creation, have perhaps been for- 
 gotten, have passed away. 
 
 Why, then, do we still continue to study them? 
 Simply and solely because they contain the imperish- 
 able quality of style. They are the models of perfect 
 taste for all time, they exemplify the best methods 
 of doing things. Titian's method of painting a por- 
 trait is just as desirable to-day as in Venetian times, 
 but there is not a man living, nor has there been for 
 two hundred years, that can approach it. The tech- 
 nique of the "Hermes" or the Parthenon "Fates" 
 is, in its modernity, the despair of the modern sculp- 
 tor. It has never been equalled. Just so with the 
 Odyssey of Homer or the Natural History of Pliny. 
 There is no epic poet or novelist to tell the tale like 
 Homer, nor naturalist to write in the style of Pliny Of 
 course, Pliny's science is all false as Homer's tale is all 
 fiction; but their art was eternally true, their method 
 was permanently sound. Theories and alleged facts, 
 and even what is called scientific history, pass on, fade 
 out, and are forgotten :
 
 56 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 " Art alone 
 Enduring lasts to us. 
 The bust outlives the throne, 
 The coin, Tiberius." 
 
 Is not this element of style in language, literature, and 
 art, which teaches not the thing done so much as the 
 manner of its doing, worthy of continued study? Is it 
 not about the only permanent element in all the work of 
 the world thus far recorded ? And in teaching us taste 
 and method in the present day, is it not still useful, still 
 serviceable ? 
 
 Our modern universities in their trend toward prac- 
 tical things, are teaching scientific facts, or hypothetical 
 data, which are assumed to be the same thing. Style is 
 something that is taught only in the classical course, 
 which though still alive is slowly dying out. The 
 science course is the more popular because it fits 
 one to do things as soon as the student leaves 
 college. The facts are immediately useful. But 
 for how long do the facts prove serviceable? How 
 long does a theory in geology or biology or chem- 
 istry or electricity or engineering last ? After ten years, 
 possibly the theorists have changed everything, re- 
 versed their own conclusions, and are going the other 
 way. This is called "progress." A contradiction or a 
 flat inconsistency is always proof-positive of the pro- 
 gressive mind. 
 
 And when in the history of science has it failed to
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 57 
 
 prove contradictory and inconsistent? What laws of 
 physics, of mechanics, of geology, of evolution have 
 emerged unscathed from the search-light of the last 
 twenty years ? When the older theories are quoted by 
 the ignorant laymen, does not the modern scientist 
 smile and say something about our having "got beyond 
 that" ? One might be justified in saying that the teach- 
 ings of science are little more than temporary make- 
 shifts; and that its theories are merely working hy- 
 potheses of the moment. Certainly it would seem as 
 though the element of permanency had no part in it, 
 and the quality of universality was not within its keep- 
 ing. 
 
 However, it is not worth while pushing this contention 
 too hard or too far. There is no quarrel with scientific 
 or practical teaching except as it may arrogate to itself 
 undue importance. Its permanent value is perhaps 
 factitious; but its temporary value may be considerable. 
 It is only when it is enlisted entirely in the service of 
 Business, aiding and abetting, even stimulating the 
 money-getting mania of the day, that one feels like 
 quarrelling with it. For the American, by natural in- 
 heritance, has keen enough instincts for the dollar, and 
 needs no process of education further to sharpen his 
 wits and shape his inclination. It seems at times as 
 though an education in style that taught him how to 
 use money after it was gained might be quite as useful 
 as the education in science that teaches him how to gain 
 it in the first place.
 
 58 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 We are not far from right in supposing that the 
 scientific and "practical" courses in the colleges are 
 superseding the classical or "cultural" courses. It is 
 matter of common knowledge in those colleges and uni- 
 versities where both classical and scientific courses are 
 offered, that the latter is the more popular, the one that 
 is gathering in the majority of the students. And, 
 moreover, by the system of elective studies now in 
 vogue in all the colleges, it is possible for one to take a 
 classical or arts course and yet, strictly speaking, get 
 very little of either the arts or the classics. The 
 elective system came into existence really as a means of 
 defeating the required classical courses. By it a 
 student was not only able to select what studies it 
 pleased him to pursue, but to select those that ran along 
 parallel lines with his future professional work. In 
 other words, it was another aid toward something 
 "practical." It is so regarded by the Student at the 
 present time; and that is why it is so popular in all the 
 colleges. 
 
 To-day the electives offered in the ordinary college or 
 university are something astonishing. The student 
 may not only take courses in economics, biology, miner- 
 alogy, but also horticulture, forestry, sanitary engineer- 
 ing, naval architecture. There are whole "schools" 
 or departments devoted to such practical things as 
 electrical, mechanical, and mining engineering, to 
 chemistry, architecture, ceramics, agriculture, textile 
 work. These technical courses are avowedly put forth
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 59 
 
 according to the United States Commissioner of Educa- 
 tion "to increase the productive industries of a State." 
 In addition to this teaching of the larger universities, 
 almost every State in the Union has its separate college 
 (supported by the State and also to some extent by 
 Congress), established "for the benefit of agriculture 
 and the mechanic arts." In these Agricultural Colleges 
 there were enrolled in 1905, 54,974 students; and, if I 
 read the Report of the Commissioner of Education 
 aright, there were in that year only 82,629 under- 
 graduates, men and women included, in all the classical 
 or liberal-arts courses in all the colleges of the country. 
 But still more practical things, with immediate money 
 results held up as a temptation, are offered by the 
 Manual and Industrial Training Schools throughout 
 the country. They have sprung up in amazing num- 
 bers within the last ten years, and self-made million- 
 aires have endowed them lavishly, not to say extrava- 
 gantly. Without doubt they are most commendable 
 institutions, and, like the Agricultural Colleges, do a vast 
 amount of good work. I would not be understood as 
 undervaluing the sendees of any of these educational 
 institutions. They all have their mission and make for 
 good. But my primary object in bringing them into 
 line, one by one, is to suggest how much more popular 
 than any other is that good one that makes directly for 
 the dollar. I wish to suggest that the whole stream of 
 education is being gradually turned into the channels 
 of trade, is being commercialized; and that colleges
 
 60 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 themselves, with all their tradition of culture, learning 
 and "pure science," are fast becoming producers of the 
 business man rather than the scholar. 
 
 To return to our Manual and Industrial Training 
 Schools, there were in 1894, according to the Report of 
 the Commissioner of Education, only fifteen of them 
 in the country; and they had something like 3,362 
 pupils. In ten years, however, the number of schools 
 had jumped to one hundred and six with 43,197 pupils. 
 This is certainly a tremendous increase, and may be 
 considered a reflection perhaps of the great material 
 prosperity that visited us during those years. It was a 
 fitting of the hand to the work immediately before it, 
 a preparation for mercantile and mechanical pursuits. 
 
 One may infer as much regarding the large enrolment 
 of pupils in the Business Colleges of the country of 
 recent years. The courses of study they offer are not 
 long in some cases a few weeks, in most cases only a 
 few months, are required to complete them. The 
 average college devoted to business is emphatically 
 a get-ready-quick concern. It turns out the stenog- 
 rapher, the typewriter, the book-keeper, the clerk, to 
 meet a hurried and not too-exacting demand. For 
 more than fifty years they have been in existence in the 
 United States, and in 1904-05 there were 4,936 different 
 institutions (colleges and universities included) where 
 business was taught to 262,798 pupils. The regular 
 Business Colleges outside of the universities had an 
 enrolment of not less than 146,086 students.
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 61 
 
 This three-months' institution and its patronage in- 
 dicates a disposition of the people; but is, in itself, not 
 very important, except as it has set the pace for the 
 university. It has produced the clerk, but not the 
 banker or the full-fledged merchant. There has not 
 been enough of it to "fit a young man for the struggle 
 of commercial life." So the universities have taken it 
 up, and, being highly commended therefore by banking 
 associations, seem to be carrying it forward with suc- 
 cess. The Wharton School of Finance and Economy 
 of the University of Pennsylvania, was established in 
 1881. The object of it was to furnish "an adequate 
 education in the principles underlying successful busi- 
 ness management, and in the principles of civil govern- 
 ment." The course now extends over four years, and 
 includes banking, accounting, business law and prac- 
 tice, general politics, journalism, sociology, economics. 
 The success of this school soon opened the doors of 
 other institutions, and we now have the mercantile and 
 commercial department in such universities as Chicago 
 and Northwestern, and such State universities as those 
 of California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, 
 Vermont, Wisconsin and others. 
 
 Here are not only straws, but whole fields of grain 
 that show which way the wind is blowing. The appe- 
 tite for business seems to grow by what it feeds on, and 
 the training in business at the university is but a sharp- 
 ening of the teeth for the increased appetite. Was it 
 Mr. Huxley who said that "sooner or later everything
 
 62 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 resolves itself into a matter of finance" ? Certainly 
 with us there is a trend, not only toward mercantile 
 things, but a growing disposition to think in mercantile 
 terms. Even our great professor of psychology, Dr. 
 James, is prone to talk of "the cash value" of a certain 
 quality of brain, and "does it pay" is heard from the 
 pulpit as often as from the professor's chair. The 
 plain truth is, that colleges, universities, and education 
 in general, are fast becoming commercialized in accord- 
 ance with the leaning of popular thought. Even the 
 professions are now conducted on business principles, 
 and with a lively sense of the pecuniary rewards to be 
 gained from them. 
 
 The representation in the different professions, as 
 regards the number of students in each, is given below; 
 the figures being taken from the Report of the Commis- 
 sioner of Education for 1905. The figures for law are 
 misleading because they represent only the students in 
 law schools. There are many more students who study 
 in offices and enter the profession by examination 
 before courts than through the universities. A conser- 
 vative estimate of law students would be not less than 
 30,000 in the year 1905: 
 
 Theology, number of students in 1905 7,41 1 
 
 Law (Report of Commissioner of Education, 14,714) 30,000 
 
 Medicine 25,835 
 
 Dentistry 7,149 
 
 Pharmacy 4,944 
 
 Veterinary Medicine 1,269
 
 EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS 63 
 
 From 1888 to 1899 the percentage of increase in each 
 of the professions was as follows : * 
 
 a Theology 24 per cent. 
 
 Law 224 per cent. 
 
 Medicine 84 per cent. 
 
 Dentistry 380 per cent. 
 
 Pharmacy 31 per cent. 
 
 Veterinary Medicine 17 per cent. 
 
 If these figures are compared with the estimated 
 average salaries paid in the professions, as given in 
 Chapter III of this book, it will be found that the 
 greatest movement is toward those professions that pay 
 the most. This may be a mere coincidence, but it 
 looks very like an ordinary case of cause and effect. 
 And there are people, a-plenty and to spare, who can see 
 nothing undesirable in it. They have come to regard 
 the professions as merely uncapitalized industries, occu- 
 pations that are pursued for a livelihood only. Perhaps 
 they are right, and they are certainly aligned with the 
 modern spirit; but there are a few old fogies who do 
 not agree with them. Let us see if there is not some 
 reason for dissent. 
 
 1 Butler, Education in the United States. 
 
 * This is probably an error, or else the candidates for the 
 ministry have fallen off very rapidly in the last half dozen 
 years. Professor Burton, of Chicago, I am informed, re- 
 ported to a recent meeting of the Religious Education Society 
 that there were 1,000 fewer clergymen to-day than ten years 
 ago.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 
 
 IT is not to be supposed, and it has never been con- 
 tended, that those in professions should forswear al> 
 pecuniary reward, should live in the rarefied air of the 
 ideal, and take no thought about money for the morrow. 
 Such a contention would be absurd. The professional 
 man is entitled to his fee or salary just as the laboring 
 man is entitled to his wage. He could not exist without 
 it. But, to reverse the statement, it never was sup- 
 posed, until recently, that a man should or would go 
 into a profession just for its fees, merely for the money 
 he could make out of it. Such a course was not only 
 considered despicable morally, but ill-advised prac- 
 tically. The professions were callings that demanded 
 consecration to high aims, to noble purposes, to self- 
 denials; and any one who thought to make a mere 
 business of them was looked at askance as being either 
 a fool or a knave. 
 
 But if we have not "changed ah that," we have cer- 
 tainly modified it in these recent days. The old ideas 
 still obtain with many. There are teachers, as there 
 
 64
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 65 
 
 are preachers, who believe themselves "called" to their 
 work, people who think little of pecuniary reward, who 
 live humbly and deny themselves pleasures that they 
 may help others, uplift humanity, support the state, 
 and build for the glory of God. And they have some 
 reward in this life, too, though it be not in money. The 
 community at large respects and honors them; the 
 community sorrows when they have gone, and points 
 with pride to the example they have set, the good that 
 they have done. Every one in every city and village of 
 the land has known, and still knows, such types, for 
 they are still abundant. But I wonder if he does not 
 know, also, the up-to-date teacher or preacher who is 
 perhaps as much concerned with and about his salary 
 as about the minds or the souls of those under his 
 guidance. I wonder if this man who stickles for his 
 immediate reward in coin of standard value, and more 
 of it from year to year, is not a growing quantity in our 
 country. It is almost incredible that one should go 
 into the ministry, or even a professor's chair, for the 
 purpose of getting "a fat salary"; but is there not a 
 shrewd suspicion abroad that some do that very thing ? 
 It is not a thought that makes one any the happier for 
 the thinking; but the spirit of the tunes thrusts it upon 
 us. 
 
 Regarding the other professions we can be more 
 reasonably certain. The increased growth in the dental 
 and medical professions suggests that there is some- 
 thing besides honor and glory to be gained from them.
 
 66 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 The stories told of the fabulous fees demanded and 
 received in these professions (for instance, a thousand 
 dollars for filling the teeth of a visiting prince, and sev- 
 eral hundreds of thousands for a year of medical attend- 
 ance upon a Pittsburg millionaire) give a hint of some- 
 thing more; and perhaps attract young men to them. 
 To be sure, the great pecuniary successes in either 
 medicine or dentistry are almost as rare as in literature; 
 but youth never doubts but that it is to be the shining 
 exception, and excel all others. That there is a grow- 
 ing appreciation of the value of money in these profes- 
 sions there can be little doubt; and the modern motto 
 of charges, "All that the traffic will bear" 1 is now ap- 
 plied almost as readily in a physician's or a dentist's 
 "parlor" as in a freight-agent's office. This practice of 
 charging according to a patient's ability to pay is not 
 only a settled custom, but one that is openly defended. 
 The defence is that "the responsibility is so much 
 greater" in the case of a millionaire than a mechanic. 
 But the physician's best effort is expected in every 
 case; and when the patient dies, what earthly good does 
 it do to hold, or try to hold, any one "responsible"? 
 With the same defence a barber could justify himself 
 in charging five dollars for shaving a Vanderbilt, or 
 a shoemaker fifty dollars for shoeing an Astor. The 
 truth is, the laborer, whether physician or mechanic, is 
 
 1 The phrase has a technical meaning in railway trans- 
 portation, but it has been distorted by common usage to 
 mean "all that one can be made to pay."
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 67 
 
 entitled to his wages, and no more; it being wholly im- 
 material and irrelevant who hires or who pays. Mak- 
 ing a person pay according to his ability is a practice 
 borrowed from highwaymen, and it loses little of its 
 outrageous quality when applied by the legal and the 
 medical professions. The practice was adopted, of 
 course, that the practitioner should get more money out 
 of his profession. That is precisely the point of my 
 illustration the growing desire for money, even in the 
 professions. 
 
 Aside from those who are strictly within the spheres 
 of their professions, there has been a great business 
 established in both medicine and dentistry by the 
 quacks and the sharpers. One has only to think of the 
 enormous trade in patent medicines, every one of them 
 more or less of a swindle, to appreciate what good 
 ground for tilling, the avaricious and the sordid con- 
 sider the profession of medicine. In dentistry there is 
 the same story. Painless extraction and five-dollars-a- 
 set teeth are flaunted in letters of gold from the second- 
 story windows at almost every street corner, by prac- 
 titioners who are trying to outbid others and get rich 
 quick. This is not only a cheapening of the profession 
 to a business, but a reduction of the business to an 
 auction-shop grade. 
 
 As for law, it is fast passing, if it has not already 
 passed, into a mere money-making occupation. The 
 members of that profession admit as much. To be 
 sure, the older traditions still survive there as in the
 
 68 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 ministry. There are trials in court where silken gowns 
 are worn, and learned charges, great speeches, brilliant 
 sallies of wit are delivered. The etiquette and some- 
 thing of the literature of the law are still in evidence. 
 But every one knows that the great volume of "law 
 practice" is done now, not in court, but in offices, be- 
 hind closed doors; and that much of it is enlisted in 
 the service of corporations. The lawyer promoter is 
 abroad in the profession, and the stories of his charges, 
 or demands, outrank those of the medical specialist. 
 The difference between a firm of lawyers of this type 
 and the average firm of Wall Street brokers is not very 
 apparent, save that the brokers charge a regular com- 
 mission and the lawyers charge whatever they can col- 
 lect. 
 
 If there were any doubt about the commercializing 
 of law and medicine it might be dispelled by the influx 
 of Jews into those professions. Of course, there are 
 various grades and kinds of Jews. Some of them are 
 very respectable, of high standing socially and profes- 
 sionally, excellent lawyers and physicians. Every one 
 respects such types in whatever calling they are found, 
 for they are among our best citizens. But they are 
 the exceptions. When there is a marked rush of many 
 members of the race into either a business or a pro- 
 fession it is very difficult to convince people that there 
 is not some direct pecuniary reason for it. The Jews, 
 as a class and as a race, have not spent their days work- 
 ing for the state and the people. Their reputation
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 69 
 
 as money-getters is too well established to be easily 
 shaken off; and when they take up with a profession 
 like the law, there is the suggestion of expected re- 
 wards in hard cash rather than in credited glory. 
 
 There is another profession that the Jew has helped 
 to turn into a business, though before him it had been 
 somewhat degraded by true-enough Americans. I re- 
 fer to journalism. Time was, and not so long ago at 
 that, when an editor was a champion of the people's 
 rights, a moulder of public opinion, a guide, a teacher, 
 a leader. His calling was as distinctly marked and 
 mapped out as that of the professor or the clergyman; 
 and his power was perhaps greater than either of them. 
 He was seldom a wealthy man, seldom a mere mouth- 
 piece of the counting-room downstairs, seldom a man 
 editing his paper in the interests of its circulation. He 
 often took the trust reposed in him most seriously, 
 shouldered his responsibilities to the community, worked 
 hard all his life, and died in his editorial chair, a man 
 respected, and a force for decency and righteousness. 
 
 But how now ? What responsibility is accepted by 
 the editor of the average metropolitan daily, except 
 the obvious duty of making possible a large return on 
 invested capital? What sort of a guide, teacher, and 
 leader is to be found at the editor's desk of the average 
 yellow journal, daily or weekly? The proprietors, 
 through their editors, talk glibly to Labor of its 
 "rights" meaning money-rights; and they denounce 
 trusts, corporations, and millionaires as octopuses and
 
 70 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 financial buccaneers; but what about their own 
 trust methods and the millions that they themselves 
 have amassed ? They blow hot and cold with 
 equal facility and, ostensibly, they are the absolute 
 servants of the people, defenders of the rights of the 
 poor and the oppressed, loud criers for justice and 
 equality; but if the justice they demand for others were 
 meted out to themselves they would not survive its 
 execution. For there is not a more far-reaching in- 
 fluence for evil in our Western civilization than the 
 sensational newspapers. There is not a thing that is 
 foolish or mendacious or impure or indecent that they 
 will not do or say to increase their circulation. They 
 are makers of money, and not in the least bit scrupulous 
 as to how they shall make it. If they could be made to 
 consume their own smoke, or swallow their own poison, 
 no one would worry himself very much about it; but, 
 unfortunately, they are not a negative but a positive 
 evil. All the churches and colleges and schools in the 
 land cannot build up again what they have pulled down. 
 They have done more harm to common decency and 
 common-sense in these United States than can be re- 
 paired in a century to come. 
 
 These may seem "wild and whirring" words, but 
 they are not wild enough. Neither are they at all new. 
 They have been repeated many times and with good 
 reason. For the daily newspaper that is, the average 
 sensational paper of which we have enough and to 
 spare in every city is a force for evil from its very
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 71 
 
 start. Let us state it economically and sociologically 
 thus: 
 
 1. It is a destroyer of the forests (and they are fading 
 like snow before the sun) through the demand for 
 wood pulp in making paper. The press is voracious 
 and insatiate in this demand, and it uses twice as much 
 pulp as there is any necessity for using because fully 
 one half of almost every newspaper is superfluous. 
 
 2. It is a destroyer of good labor, since there is 
 nothing permanent about the product, nothing that 
 lasts more than twenty-four hours. Like the flowers 
 of the rich, so abundantly berated by the economists, 
 the newspaper is speedily flung into the ash barrel 
 that being the only resemblance between it and flowers 
 and the daily labor of, say, two thousand men is 
 practically lost. 
 
 3. It is a destroyer of good morals, good taste, good 
 sense, and good language. This needs no argument. 
 We have only to look about us to see the pernicious ef- 
 fect of the yellow-journal habit on young and old alike. 
 As a corrupter of morals and manners it is about the 
 most active agency we have ever known in this country. 
 
 4. It is a destroyer of decent towns because most of 
 the pestilential, smoking, smouldering dump-heaps that 
 surround our cities are made up of the cast-away news- 
 paper; and most of the unsightly litters along fences, 
 side-walks, and gutters are composed of newspaper 
 refuse. Even in its death it manages to leave a stench 
 in the nostrils and a sore in the eye.
 
 72 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Yes; there are good newspapers a great many of 
 them; but they do not reconcile us to the evil done by 
 the bad ones ; nor do they invalidate the conclusion that 
 commercialism has the profession of journalism by the 
 throat. The first, last, and only reason for the existence 
 of the yellow journal is that it pays. The love of money 
 is the root of the evil; and getting it by hook or by 
 crook is the aim and purpose of every one of the colored 
 irruptions. Even the best papers of the day are not 
 free from the influence of the counting-room. They 
 are profitable enterprises ; and in a way it is a satisfac- 
 tion to know that they are, to know that decency still 
 pays here in America; but the deadly fear that is grow- 
 ing at the heart of every one of them is that they do 
 not pay enough. Year by year the more conservative 
 journals change their tactics, sell out to more radical 
 owners, or drop out of sight. It is not necessary to give 
 specific instances of this. Every newspaper reader in 
 the country has an illustration in mind. He knows and 
 perhaps deplores the great change that has taken place 
 because he feels that it is a distinct loosening of our 
 mental and moral grip. 
 
 The swift degeneracy of the press, which began some 
 years ago, was not without its effect upon our periodical 
 literature. The ten-cent magazine soon came into 
 existence, and its vaporizings about its "enormous cir- 
 culation" (an advertising trick borrowed from the 
 newspapers) quite overset the equilibrium of the more 
 staid publications. Even the best of the older illus-
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 73 
 
 trated magazines wavered and trembled. There was a 
 hasty overhauling of the "table of contents," a great 
 rush into shorter, more numerous, and more popular 
 articles, a doubling and trebling of illustrations and a 
 bid for attention with colored covers and "catching" 
 advertisements. The price went down, the short story 
 went in, and the serious article went out. All of which 
 was no doubt considered by the magazine publishers 
 as a proper concession on their part to changing public 
 opinion, a keeping abreast of the times, an indication 
 of progress and liberality. But in reality the magazine 
 publishers were doing then just what the newspaper 
 publishers did before them. They were publishing 
 down to the level of the great masses, bidding for more 
 subscribers, increased circulation, more money. 
 
 Similar conditions obtain to-day, though most of the 
 higher-priced magazines have righted themselves and 
 are once more appealing to the reading as well as the 
 picture-looking public. They still take an interest in 
 their circulation, be it understood, but they have found 
 out that a small circulation among the influential and 
 moneyed class pays better than a large circulation 
 among the impecunious masses. It is not the price 
 received for the magazine that counts the most, but the 
 price that may be charged for advertisements. Natur- 
 ally, advertisements circulated among well-to-do people 
 will bring more returns to the advertisers than those 
 sent out to poor people. However, we need not pursue 
 the motives of the publishers into the last ditch. That
 
 74 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 respectability in magazine publishing pays is again 
 matter for congratulation, not reproach. 
 
 Of course, the ten-cent magazines continue to 
 flourish, and each year sees a new crop of them spring- 
 ing up. They are purely commercial ventures, and are 
 not very different from the newspapers with the colored 
 supplements, save that they are issued once a month in- 
 stead of every day. And, of course, the magazine with 
 a purpose and a history continues to exist. There is 
 still a demand for serious publications, and there is no 
 suggestion that "literature" has been totally eliminated 
 from the magazines. There is a suggestion, however, 
 that magazine publication as such has joined in the 
 pursuit of the dollar. 
 
 This is quite as true, and perhaps in as great a degree, 
 of book publication. There are volumes accepted and 
 published to-day, by the best of publishers, that never 
 would have stood a ghost of a chance of seeing the light 
 twenty years ago volumes published solely because 
 they would sell. Almost anything that will pay can find 
 a publisher; and, negatively, almost anything that will 
 not pay will fail of finding a publisher. Abstractly con- 
 sidered there is little to find fault with in the latter 
 proposition. No one can expect a publisher to lose 
 money in his business. Such proceedings, if continued, 
 would soon put him out of publishing altogether and 
 into bankruptcy. As a business man he has to study 
 the public demand, and keep an eye on the items of 
 profit and loss. But there it is again. The picking
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 75 
 
 out of those books only that will pay is a commercializ- 
 ing of thought which cannot have other than a depress- 
 ing effect. For the wish of the publisher for a paying 
 book is almost immediately reflected in the writer. No 
 author wishes his publisher to lose money on his ac- 
 count, and so, perhaps unconsciously, he tries to write 
 books that will sell. He may not be consumed with a 
 desire to write a "best seller" among the novels; he 
 may merely wish to write, in a more popular style, a 
 book of history or ethics or art; but in the end he com- 
 promises with his ideal and weakens his work. His 
 "message," when it finally emerges, is so prettily put 
 to please the public that its force is gone. Instead of 
 a spirited piece of writing there is only that empty 
 formula a popular book. 
 
 The writer of to-day, whether author, magazine- 
 contributor or journalist, almost always has to com- 
 promise with his hope or expectation. He writes not 
 what he would, but, three times out of four, what an 
 editor or publisher suggests. The journalist who re- 
 ceives an order to write up a certain thing is usually told 
 what to say and how to say it; the magazine articles 
 three out of four again are usually ordered in the 
 same way. The majority of present-day writers are 
 producers of "copy." They write to order, write up 
 or down to illustrations, alter and amend their work 
 under the editorial blue pencil; and in the end possibly 
 have the mortification of seeing their article in print, 
 minus the head or tail, owing to the exigencies of the
 
 76 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 printer's forms. The illustrator's work is of a piece 
 with this. His art is a series of compromises from be- 
 ginning to end, and in the final result the work that 
 bears his name may come out a series of ink blotches 
 thanks to the hurried processes of the cylinder press. 
 
 It is proper to say that not all of this is due to com- 
 mercial requirements. The editor thinks he is actually 
 producing better literature by his supervision, and 
 three times out of four he thinks aright. As for the 
 printer, poor devil! he is probably doing the best he 
 can; and he, too, has his compromises and limitations. 
 But when all is said, and the proper allowances are 
 made, there is the desire of the editor and the publisher 
 to give the public what it wants, to cater to its tastes, 
 to increase sales, and to make a financial success. 
 That desire is by no means the most lofty, nor again is 
 it the most despicable of human aspirations; but it 
 does not conduce to the production of the greatest 
 literature, nor the finest quality of art. Its tendency is 
 to turn the library and the studio into a counting-room, 
 and to weigh everything by the dollar standard. 
 
 One might go on and suggest that the architect, the 
 painter, the sculptor, the singer, the musician, the 
 actor, the lecturer, are each and every one of them 
 trammelled by considerations of a pecuniary nature. 
 The sculptor and the painter are perhaps freer than 
 the others, and do more starving in consequence 
 thereof; and yet we all know people in both of those 
 professions who have made shift to compromise with
 
 COMMERCIALIZED PROFESSIONS 77 
 
 Mammon have been forced to do so. The architect 
 can no more escape the financial aspect of his building 
 than the contractor who is building it; nor can the 
 actor escape the workings of the box-office no matter 
 what may be his art. It is almost absurd to talk about 
 the traditions of art in connection with the theatre of 
 to-day. In New York, the control of the stage has 
 passed into the hands of the Jews, and every one can 
 draw his own conclusions as to whether it is controlled 
 in the interests of art or money. It is no better 
 elsewhere in the country. The trail of the dollar is 
 over it all. 
 
 Nor need one go to the college lecture-room or the 
 laboratory of the scientist seeking for that rare article, 
 "pure science." There is little of it left; but in its 
 place we find a great deal of applied science. Of 
 course, the application is made to something that will 
 pay. If an Edison or a Bell or a Marconi hits upon a 
 happy thought it is quickly incorporated, capitalized, 
 and put upon the market. What is the use of thinking 
 up something new if there is no money to be made out 
 of it? What a foolish person was M. Cure", who dis- 
 covered radium and handed over his discovery to the 
 world without getting a sou for it I Why, he might 
 have made a fortune out of it I Quite true. Galileo 
 might have patented the roundness of the earth, and 
 Martin Luther should have copyrighted the Reforma- 
 tion; but, poor wretches! they never made the price of 
 a pair of shoes out of their discoveries. Instead of
 
 78 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 money one got jailed, and the other was excommuni- 
 cated. And still there are people weak-minded enough 
 to think that they left the world a little better than 
 they found it, though they left it no money.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 
 
 THE statement will probably not be disputed that 
 what we have of material wealth has been taken out of 
 the land, in one form or another. It is an elementary 
 truth that the earth is the only original producer. 
 Everything of value in our country has been mined, 
 cut, grown, or found somewhere or somehow. We 
 may transmute or transform it by our hands or our 
 machinery, but for the materials themselves every- 
 thing harks back to the land. 
 
 And such a land! The sun never shone upon a 
 fairer, a richer, a more productive one. By virtue of 
 favorable climate and an abundant rainfall it has vast 
 agricultural areas of almost unlimited resources. All 
 kinds of produce can be grown. There are belts that 
 yield cotton, cane, rice, wheat, corn, oats; there are 
 meadows for grass, rye and barley, uplands for fruits 
 and vines, and wide plains for cattle, horses and sheep. 
 Out of the mountains come gold, silver, copper, iron; 
 out of the valleys come coal and oil. For more than a 
 hundred years there has been an uninterrupted cutting 
 of the forests, yet there is still timber; and for a longer 
 
 79
 
 80 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 time a harrying of the fauna, yet there is still game. 
 It has been, it is yet, a land of plenty, and all its paths 
 have dropped fatness. 
 
 This was our inheritance from our fathers. Neither 
 we nor they made it. Strictly speaking, it was al- 
 ready made, and about all that we did originally was 
 to enter upon it, to take possession. We were fortu- 
 nate in finding it, and all our self-accredited cleverness 
 and energy would have availed us little if we had not 
 chanced upon a fair domain. That we improved the 
 inheritance in some ways is true. The land has been 
 broken and made to yield crops. Great wealth has 
 come out of this tilling of the soil, and the wealth has 
 been rightly and properly gained. No one finds fault 
 with such development in principle, though one may 
 flinch over some of the methods. In the main, it was 
 not only necessary but highly commendable energy. 
 
 Unfortunately, the forests, the mines, the waters, the 
 mountains, and everything in them from a fish to a fur- 
 seal, from a California redwood to an oil-well or a coal- 
 mine, have been "developed" also; which is, perhaps, 
 not so altogether praiseworthy. For there is such a 
 thing as developing resources off the face of the earth 
 to our present gain and our ultimate loss. It is a 
 familiar lesson often set forth in fable. One can get 
 warm by burning down his house, but it has never been 
 thought a wise action; and a people may get rich by 
 flaying their land, and selling off its natural resources to 
 the highest bidders, but it is a very short-sighted policy.
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 81 
 
 Now of these two kinds of development let us 
 understand that one of them is unquestionably right. 
 Wherever the land is tilled, and by man's exertions two 
 blades are made to grow where none was before, there 
 is value made and money properly earned. Farming, 
 stock growing, horticulture, and all the varied indus- 
 tries growing out of them, constitute production by 
 man's exertion. The utilization of this production by 
 the consumption of the increase, a restoration to the 
 land of what has been taken from it, or an equivalent; 
 in short, development by betterment of the original 
 "plant," are not only rightful, but laudable doings. 
 Rightful, too, is the building of houses and cities, the 
 construction of roads, bridges, railways, water-ways, 
 harbors. All this is putting back something of value 
 and use in place of something taken away; nay, more, 
 it is a creation and a conservation of wealth. In con- 
 nection with it a reasonable use of timber, minerals, 
 stone, oil, coal, is not only proper but absolutely neces- 
 sary. No one is foolish enough to argue that no tree 
 shall be cut, or gas-well tapped, or coal-mine opened. 
 A rational utilization a taking of what is needful is 
 not an act open to criticism. 
 
 It is a pleasure to think, and to say, that much of 
 this right development has been carried on in the 
 United States, and that the disposition to increase it is 
 perhaps growing with each new year. Of course, some 
 of it has been improperly done, and the destruction 
 thereby has been something enormous. The settler,
 
 82 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 about whom so much picturesque nonsense has been 
 written the settler who has so much difficulty in re- 
 maining settled for any length of time is at heart a 
 slasher and a smasher with small regard for the country 
 where he takes up a claim. He usually hacks away the 
 timber, fires the whole mountain side to make better 
 pasturage, breaks more ground than he can till, mud- 
 dies up all the streams, and gives back to the soil a 
 board shanty and a line of barbed-wire fence. Per- 
 haps in a few years the country has become too civ- 
 ilized for him, and he moves on farther West, to 
 repeat the performance, leaving the ground to run to 
 weeds, and the possession of the board shanty to the 
 Eastern mortgagee. 
 
 Besides this type there are plenty of make-believe 
 settlers scurrying about the country, taking up lands on 
 speculation; and plenty of companies selling farms on 
 a map, with a brass band accompaniment, that have 
 no idea of conserving or rightly developing the land. 
 The Pacific slope, with its irrigation schemes, has been 
 the stamping-ground of land "boomers"; and the 
 most conspicuous example of their methods in recent 
 years has been the Salton Sink scheme in Southern 
 California. Owing to haste and bad engineering it 
 turned out disastrously. The Colorado River, tapped 
 for irrigation purposes, got beyond their control and 
 rushed in upon the Sink, turning it into a great sea. 
 As a result there has been not only a loss of land to 
 water, but complaint from New Mexico to the Pacific
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 83 
 
 Coast, that the new sea has changed the fine dry cli- 
 mate of all the bordering states. 
 
 Perhaps this kind of blundering in the early stages of 
 a country's development is inevitable. Havoc and 
 spoliation seem always to have been the forerunner of 
 civilization. Every frontiersman of whatever name or 
 nature pioneer, settler, woodsman, miner or cowboy 
 is lawless and reckless in his expenditure of the natural 
 wealth. He takes what he pleases, cutting out the 
 tenderloin and throwing the rest of the carcass away. 
 As for preserving anything he has neither the tune nor 
 the inclination. He is a Vandal, and tears down with 
 no thought of ever building up. 
 
 Yet his depletion of the natural domain, wanton 
 though it may be, is slight compared with those who 
 follow after him. Slash as he will with axe and fire, 
 nature can make repairs and cover up his depredations. 
 But what about the depredations of the organized 
 bands, the promoters and business men who, in the 
 name of "development," enter with the determination 
 to wrench everything of value from the country and sell 
 it for what they can get ? What about their wholesale 
 flaying of the land? 
 
 It is well to recognize the fact that while certain 
 products of every country can be grown again, if by any 
 chance the supply runs short, there are other products, 
 called natural resources, that cannot be restored. 
 Everything in agriculture is capable of reproduction; 
 but oil, coal, minerals, large timber, are laid down once
 
 84 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 and taken up only once. When used they are forever 
 after practically useless. Therefore any wasteful em- 
 ployment of them means not development, but de- 
 struction. It might be thought that a recognition of 
 these facts, with a knowledge that the supply is not in- 
 exhaustible, would give men pause in their use of such 
 resources, that they would use them economically and 
 with great reserve. But, no. Their very value has 
 been their undoing. Their spoliation by large business 
 concerns has been going on persistently for years, and 
 in some fields they have already been exploited to 
 exhaustion. This is our second kind of "development" 
 the kind that is just as unquestionably wrong as the 
 first kind is unquestionably right. 
 
 Perhaps the most obvious instance of a looting of 
 national wealth is to be found in our forests. They 
 have been slashed by the axe and eaten out by fires 
 until little of them is left. The shooting of the buffalo 
 was not more wanton, nor more sordid, than the anni- 
 hilation of the white pines. They vanished almost 
 before we knew it, so fierce was the onslaught. Since 
 then all the conifers the yellow pine, and the redwood 
 especially with the hard woods, have been toppling 
 and falling in the name of business and for the sake of 
 the dollar. Every one has his own personal experience 
 to narrate concerning the felling of the forests. My 
 own would only heap up an already overwhelming 
 testimony. There are many who witnessed, as I did, 
 the destruction of the great forests of Minnesota and
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 85 
 
 Wisconsin, and since then they have seen the slashing 
 going on in the Middle. and New England States, in 
 Canada, Georgia, Montana, California, Oregon. It is 
 the same story everywhere. Title to timber lands has 
 fallen into private hands, oftentimes by methods that 
 will not bear the light of day; and nothing will answer 
 but the trees must fall, be stripped for telegraph poles 
 or railroad ties, be sawed up into flooring, scantling, and 
 lath, or ground into pulp, to be consumed eventually 
 by some settler, corporation, or newspaper. 
 
 Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service, has 
 recently estimated that our timber supply would be 
 exhausted in twenty years. He thinks something can 
 be done to put off the famine a few years by reforesta- 
 tion the planting and growing of new forests ; but this 
 is, of course, a very slow process, with a long cry to 
 maturity. Something has been done in the last dozen 
 or more years to stop the havoc by the creation of 
 national parks timber reserves under government con- 
 trol. At present about one-fifth of the still-existing 
 wooded area of the country has been reserved, all of it 
 lying west of the Mississippi. For this action the gov- 
 ernment is to be thanked, but there is still the regret 
 that it did not come sooner. One of the stable doors 
 has finally been locked, but the best horses had already 
 disappeared, and four-fifths of those left are sure to 
 follow the outward trail. 
 
 There are severe losses attendant upon this destruc- 
 tion of the forests quite aside from the prospective
 
 86 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 scarcity of timber. I do not mean moral or aesthetic 
 losses, for they are felt only by the few; but material 
 deficits that affect every one alike. There is a lessening 
 in the rainfall with the passing of the forests, a growth 
 of the desert land area, a change in the climate. Still 
 further, there is a deficiency in the water supply of the 
 rivers and a consequent check upon navigation. The 
 Mississippi is a fair enough illustration of this. In 1868, 
 when the great forests at the head-waters of the river 
 were still intact, the river itself was a true "Father of 
 Waters," clear as a mountain lake, and deep enough for 
 three-decker steam-boats to run up as far as St. Paul. 
 The snows that fell during the winter in the dense forests 
 were protected, lying under the trees, from the warm 
 spring sun. They melted away only by slow degrees, 
 and it was June before they were entirely gone. A 
 medium stage of water in the tributary streams was 
 thus maintained through July and into August. The 
 river in those days was a thing of beauty as well as a 
 broad highway. 
 
 But now what? The forests have gone, the winter 
 snows fall and accumulate on the exposed areas, and 
 with the first warm sun of March, they perhaps all melt 
 and run off in a few days. Muddy torrents rush down 
 the tributary streams, the Mississippi receives them, 
 swells enormously, expands into a "spring freshet" 
 that tears and wrenches the valley from St. Paul to 
 New Orleans, drowning out and destroying villages and 
 towns on its way to the sea. When the wild flood has
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 87 
 
 passed there is a collapse. Receiving no constant sup- 
 plies from the tributaries, the river dwindles to a shallow 
 stream. That is substantially its condition to-day. The 
 large steam-boats no longer come and go upon the 
 upper waters, for the river has now little more than 
 two-thirds the water it had in 1868. And the Missis- 
 sippi is merely one of the many streams that have been 
 thus perverted. It is not the exception. 
 
 The great coadjutor of the lumberman in destruction 
 is the miner. He has always been after something 
 down deep, and has never cared a rap about what 
 damage he inflicted on the surface. The Forty-Niners 
 in California the Argonauts are illustrative of the 
 whole tribe. They turned streams and rivers from their 
 courses, forcing them to break new channels through 
 forests and down valleys, that they might gather gold in 
 the drained beds. The digging, the ransacking, the turn- 
 ing things awry by these men was something extraor- 
 dinary, considering the fewness of their numbers and 
 their lack of machinery. California still bears the scars 
 of their invasion. And yet these were children in their 
 capacity for destruction compared with the organized 
 bands who came after and took up hydraulic mining. 
 With streams piped down from the mountains, gaining 
 terrific force by their fall, the new miners blew hills and 
 valleys and the sides of mountains to pieces in the 
 search for gold. Happily this kind of mining was 
 stopped some years ago by State statute; yet in Cali- 
 fornia and Oregon one can still see where hundreds
 
 88 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 and hundreds of acres have been ruined by it the 
 black loam of the surface being turned under the clay 
 and gravel by the hydraulic blast. In those fair cut- 
 throat days any camp of miners would have blown a 
 whole county into the Pacific Ocean to gain fifty dollars 
 in gold. 
 
 Mining under any circumstances is more or less de- 
 structive of the surrounding country. In Arizona they 
 blast the top off a mountain as cleanly as though the 
 forces of Co lima were under it; and in Montana and 
 Colorado they do substantially the same thing. Even 
 the coal-miners have a way of scattering the black 
 death up and down their diggings. The sluicing and 
 drainage of the mines are carried into the lakes and 
 rivers, the fish die, vegetation withers along the streams, 
 the whole country side looks black and palsied. And 
 with coal-mining comes up again the terrific consump- 
 tion of something that can never be replaced. It is esti- 
 mated that fifty years will see the end of our anthracite; 
 but that gives no one more than a momentary accelera- 
 tion of heart action. Every engine in every power plant 
 in the Eastern country is burning it just as fast and furi- 
 ously as it can. Forced draught, shifts of firemen to run 
 night and day, picked coal for greater steam are at work, 
 as though the actual desire were to see how much can 
 be consumed hi a given time. With bituminous coal 
 the figures must be trebled or quadrupled. One ocean 
 steamer alone (the " Mauretania") swallows a thousand 
 tons a day, and the countless furnaces of the mills and
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 89 
 
 factories throughout the land consume in the neighbor- 
 hood of three hundred millions of tons a year. Surely 
 at such a rate the day of our reckoning is not far off. 
 
 And how long is our iron and petroleum to last ? 
 Natural gas, under the mad extravagance of its use, and 
 the imbecile waste of it in mid-air, soon gave out; but 
 what reason have we to suppose that oil will continue 
 to flow without ceasing forever and a day ? As for iron, 
 it is estimated that there is not enough to last for more 
 than sixty years at the present rate of consumption. 
 What is to be done by those who come after us no one 
 Knows or seems to care. It is vaguely suggested that 
 "they" will discover something to take the place of 
 iron before that. It is possible; but that does not 
 make our conduct any wiser, more economic, or more 
 thoughtful. We are recklessly consuming, and allow- 
 ing others to consume with us, what can never be re- 
 placed. 
 
 And arguing just a moment from the government- 
 ownership standpoint (and we may all come to it 
 eventually, willy-nilly), why should a controlling cor- 
 poration be allowed to pipe out and ship around the 
 world in tank steamers a natural product like oil, selling 
 it to foreigners wherever possible in competition with 
 Russian or Indian oils, when no man living can say if 
 we shall have any for our own use a twelvemonth 
 hence? Why, again, should enormous steel corpora- 
 tions be allowed to buy up and mine to extinction all the 
 iron mines of the land that the present generation may
 
 90 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 gain a fabulous wealth ? Are these acts different from 
 the consumption of the forests over which every coal, 
 iron, and oil man holds up his hands in horror? Is 
 not this substantially a killing of the goose that lays the 
 golden egg an unhallowed eating, drinking, and 
 merry-making antecedent to the morrow's dying ? 
 
 Oh! but our genius for "development" must be 
 allowed to run its course unhampered. The wheels of 
 progress must not be interfered with, nor present pros- 
 perity frightened from its perch. The quarrymen who, 
 until recently were engaged in blowing the Palisades to 
 pieces under the very nose of New York, or those in- 
 dividuals who are now doing their best to wreck the 
 Highlands of the Hudson, are "practical" men; and 
 all "practical" men argue thus and so. They are all 
 "developing" the country, making " business," furnish- 
 ing employment to the poor down-trodden laboring man. 
 The skin-hunters who shot the buffaloes and sold their 
 hides for two dollars apiece, the men who are now 
 trying to exterminate the seal herds in Alaska and the 
 elk and moose in Canada, with the people in the North- 
 west who are hoping to spear, dynamite or otherwise 
 kill all the salmon in all the rivers and pack them into 
 tin cans, are making "business" and furnishing em- 
 ployment in the same way. The inhabitants of the 
 Atlantic States are now beginning to feel some scar- 
 city in the supply of what is politely called "sea- 
 food." Fish are no longer so abundant as they were. 
 Perhaps that is because some years ago Business with
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 91 
 
 a tank steamer and a purse net caught and ground up 
 into oil the small food fishes in the near Atlantic 
 waters. It is feared that there will be a scarcity of 
 supplies in other fields if Business is allowed to go on 
 progressing and "developing" as it pleases. 
 
 Happily this fear is not confined alone to the bosom 
 of the college "mollycoddle." The President of the 
 United States has recently sent out a letter to all the 
 governors of the States, calling them together for a 
 conference in Washington. The reason for this confer- 
 ence had better be given in Mr. Roosevelt's own words : 
 
 MY DEAR GOVERNOR: The natural resources of the terri- 
 tory of the United States were at the time of settlement richer, 
 more varied and more available than those of any other equal 
 area on the surface of the earth. The development of the 
 resources has given us for more than a century a rate of in- 
 crease in population and wealth undreamed of by the men 
 who founded our Government and without parallel in history. 
 It is obvious that the prosperity which we now enjoy rests 
 directly upon these resources. It is equally obvious that the 
 vigor and success which we desire and foresee for this nation 
 in the future must have this as its ultimate material basis. 
 
 In view of these evident facts it seems to me that it is time 
 for the country to take account of its natural resources and to 
 inquire how long they are likely to last. We are prosperous 
 now; we should not forget that it will be just as important to 
 our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us 
 to be prosperous in our time. 
 
 Recently I expressed the opinion that there is no other ques- 
 tion now before the nation of equal gravity with the question 
 of the conservation of our natural resources, and I added that
 
 92 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 it is the plain duty of those of us who for the moment are re- 
 sponsible to make inventory of the natural resources which 
 have been handed down to us, to forecast as well as we may 
 the needs of the future, and so to handle the great sources of 
 our prosperity as not to destroy in advance all hope of the 
 prosperity of our descendants. 
 
 It is evident that the abundant natural resources on which 
 the welfare of this nation rests are becoming depleted, and in 
 not a few cases are already exhausted. This is true of all 
 portions of the United States; it is especially true of the 
 longer settled communities of the East. The gravity of the sit- 
 uation must, I believe, appeal with especial force to the Gov- 
 ernors of the States, because of their close relations to the 
 people and their responsibility for the welfare of their com- 
 munities. I have therefore decided, in accordance with the 
 suggestion of the Inland Waterways Commission, to ask the 
 Governors of the States and Territories to meet at the White 
 House on May 13, 14 and 15 to confer with the President and 
 with each other upon the conservation of natural resources. 
 
 The matters to be considered at this conference are not con- 
 fined to any region or group of States, but are of vital concern 
 to the nation as a whole and to all the people. These subjects 
 include the use and conservation of the mineral resources, the 
 resources of the land and the resources of the waters in every 
 part of our territory. . . . 
 
 Facts which I cannot gainsay force me to believe that the 
 conservation of our natural resources is the most weighty 
 question now before the people of the United States. If this 
 is so, the proposed conference, which is the first of its kind, 
 will be among the most important gatherings in our history 
 in its effect upon the welfare of all our people. . . . 
 
 It remains to be said that Mr. Roosevelt's letter has 
 met with little comment in the papers and practically
 
 "DEVELOPING" THE COUNTRY 93 
 
 no response from the people. The "practical" men of 
 the United States want no nonsense about the "con- 
 servation of our natural resources." They want the 
 resources those that are left. And it is not at all un- 
 likely that they will get them.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WASTE 
 
 THIS matter of the spoliation of the country's re- 
 sources is not to be dismissed with a few pages of 
 casual comment. There remains something further to 
 be said. The destruction is more appalling in its 
 volume than has been suggested. Everyone knows, in 
 a general way, that our great national iniquity is waste, 
 but few appreciate to what an extent it is carried. The 
 virtues never yet flourished in times of prosperity; and 
 it is now some years since we cultivated, or even had a 
 speaking acquaintance, with the virtue of saving. 
 
 The use of resources is, with us, almost always ac- 
 companied by waste the throwing away of unused 
 portions. It is this extravagance that the housekeeper 
 quarrels over, the economist writes against, and the 
 elders of the family denounce in terms of warning. 
 But great as is the squandering of substance in con- 
 sumption (and I shall have to refer to it again), it is not 
 so outrageous as the reckless expenditure that goes 
 along with original production the getting out, or the 
 growing of the materials themselves. To be specific, let 
 us go back a moment to the destruction of the forests. 
 
 94
 
 WASTE 95 
 
 If we take the word of the government experts in the 
 Forestry Department, we shall believe that less than 
 fifty per cent, of the timber cut down is carried away 
 or made any use of whatever. The larger portion is 
 allowed to rot on the ground or be consumed by forest 
 fires. This sounds almost incredible, but it is truth, 
 based not only on the estimates of the Forestry Depart- 
 ment but on the experience of those who have seen the 
 destruction going on for all these years. Indeed, the 
 lumber companies themselves cannot, and will not, 
 deny it. The forests have been "culled," not cleanly 
 cut off. The lumberman takes only the choice trees, 
 and only the choicest portion of each tree. It is the 
 old trick of cutting out the tenderloin and leaving the 
 rest of the carcass to the wolves. 
 
 This is something not only of the past but of the 
 present. It was done forty years ago and it is being 
 done to-day. 1 Add to it the further evil of breaking 
 down smaller trees by the careless felling of the large 
 ones, or their destruction to get them out of the way in 
 felling, and we have waste in its most flagrant form. 
 The smaller trees, the discarded tops, the high stumps, 
 even the "wind-fall" timber, could all be worked up 
 into merchantable lumber, or at least used for skid 
 poles, road building, wood fibres, or wood distillation; 
 but it is destroyed by fire or allowed to decay. The 
 
 1 See "Waste in Logging Southern Yellow Pine," by J. 
 Girvin Peters, in Year Book of Department of Agriculture, 
 1905.
 
 96 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 lumberman will tell you that "it doesn't pay to bother 
 with it" by which he means that it is not a get-rich- 
 quick enterprise like taking away only the picked tim- 
 ber from a very large area. 
 
 This improvidence belongs quite as much to the 
 miner as to the lumberman. Professor Holmes of the 
 United States Geological Survey has recently spoken of 
 "the enormous waste of the fuel product of the country 
 on account of the rejection of low-grade fuel." He 
 has declared that not less than fifty per cent, of the 
 natural coal supply is left underground and buried 
 under refuse. In all the mines a great quantity of 
 low-grade fuel is rejected and only the high-grade taken 
 out. In one instance, given by Professor Holmes, in 
 the mining of a twenty-five-foot vein, only four feet 
 out of the twenty-five were mined. "Once the work 
 on a mine is abandoned, the low-grade coal left behind 
 is lost permanently." 
 
 Here is the same old performance again of cutting 
 out the tenderloin. The coal-mining States are all 
 doing it; they are taking out only coal of the first 
 quality and covering up, or at least rendering inaccessi- 
 ble, the lower grades which could be profitably used 
 for heat, light, and power. At a recent meeting of the 
 American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Mr. F. E. 
 Junge, of Berlin, in a paper on "The Rational Utiliza- 
 tion of Low-Grade Fuel," said that it was " a matter of 
 political prudence for a nation to exploit the low-grade 
 fuel-materials of the country, such as peat, dust coals,
 
 WASTE 97 
 
 and refuse, instead of wasting anthracite and coke; 
 and to reserve the latter coals for more profitable and 
 important uses in the metallurgical and other indus- 
 tries." Iron and steel, for instance, depend on an- 
 thracite, coke, and charcoal for their production; but 
 it is not necessary that every gas plant or power-house 
 or tramp steamer should burn the higher grades of 
 coal. The engines of the Pennsylvania Railroad con- 
 sume 40,000 tons of high-grade coal a day, and no 
 doubt better results in running a fast train to Chicago 
 are obtained with it; but how long is the supply of 
 high-grade coal, so necessary to certain industries, to last 
 at this rate of consumption? Everyone knows that 
 sooner or later we shall get down to the bones of the 
 carcass ; but everyone has the same dull thought at the 
 back of his head that it will not come in his time. 
 "Let posterity wrestle with the problem" is the way 
 the subject is dismissed. But what right have we to 
 impose such a problem on posterity? 
 
 The method of mining coal is typical of all the mining 
 in the country. The ore veins are worked in the same 
 way as the coal veins. If they "pay" that is, pay large 
 dividends on "watered" stock they are worked; if not, 
 they are left behind, or the ore is thrown out on the 
 dumps, or used to fill in swamps, or in some way practi- 
 cally lost. This is not only true of cheap ores like iron, 
 but of more valuable products, like zinc, copper, silver, 
 and even gold. In placer-mining many of the old sand 
 and gravel dumps have recently been washed over at a
 
 98 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 profit, so great was the waste of the earlier men. But 
 this is not always possible nor profitable in other kinds 
 of mining. Besides, our "practical" men have found 
 it much easier to skim the cream, and when the first 
 skimming is exhausted, to start in upon another pan. 
 
 This way of "moving on" to fresh fields, of opening 
 up a new vein, or driving a new oil well, is so very 
 characteristic of American "development" that we can- 
 not be surprised to find it followed in almost every 
 exploitation of almost every natural resource we pos- 
 sess. It is not only coal and oil and ores and timber 
 that are thus wasted; but water power, water for irri- 
 gation, the rainfall, and even the soil itself. In the 
 matter of agriculture, for instance, the aggregate of 
 the crops in America has been so large that we have 
 perhaps jumped to the conclusion that our farm meth- 
 ods must be scientific and quite the best in the world. 
 But the very opposite is the truth. Our enormous 
 crops are the result of an enormous area under cultiva- 
 tion, not of a high average per acre. It is humiliating, 
 for instance, to read in the last Year Book of the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture (1905) that our average yield of 
 wheat for ten years, 1896-1905 wheat, which is one 
 of our great staples is only 13 bushels to the acre, while 
 Great Britain averages 31.6 per acre, France 19.6, 
 Hungary 17.5 and Germany 27.2. Even in Russia, in 
 all her barbaric states, where we imagine that anarchy, 
 nihilism, and profound ignorance are behind the plough 
 as well as the throne, there is an average yield of some-
 
 WASTE 99 
 
 thing over 10 bushels to the acre. A similar report is 
 to be made regarding oats, barley, rye. Wherever the 
 same kind of cereals are grown and comparison with 
 other countries is possible, the United States registers 
 a low average. The figures are not given for potatoes, 
 hay, rice, cotton, sugar; but there is no reason to think 
 we should fare better with them. Our smaller "truck" 
 fanners and the growers of fruits and berries have just 
 now a better average to report; but these will soon 
 report an "average down" unless the present system is 
 changed. Why is this? And what is "the present 
 system " that produces such poor results ? 
 
 Baron von Liebig, writing in 1859, accurately enough 
 summarized our system of farming at that time. He 
 says: * "The deplorable effects of the spoliation system 
 of farming are nowhere more strikingly evident than in 
 America, where the early colonists in Canada, in the 
 State of New York, in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Mary- 
 land, and elsewhere, found tracts of land, which for 
 many years, by simply ploughing and sowing, yielded 
 a succession of abundant wheat and tobacco harvests; 
 no falling off in the weight or quality of the crops re- 
 minded the farmers of the necessity of restoring to the 
 land the constituents of the soil carried away in the 
 produce. We all know what has become of those 
 fields. In less than two generations, though originally 
 so teeming with fertility, they were turned into deserts, 
 and in many districts brought to a state of such abso- 
 
 1 Liebig's Modern Agriculture, p. 144, New York, 1861.
 
 100 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 lute exhaustion, that even now, after having lain fallow 
 more than a hundred years, they will not yield a re- 
 munerative crop of a cereal plant." 
 
 In 1857, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, in introducing a 
 bill in the House of Representatives giving public lands 
 for the establishment and maintenance of Agricultural 
 Colleges, took occasion to say that the schools were 
 necessary for the better education of our farmers, who 
 were guilty of the grossest vandalism in the manage- 
 ment of their land. He showed that we in America 
 were far behind Europe in agriculture in general, and 
 more especially in the modern scientific system of 
 farming; and that the sad results were becoming 
 manifest to an alarming extent. He further said that 
 the general method of husbandry pursued in all parts 
 of the Union was so bad and imperfect, that it must 
 necessarily, year after year, more and more impoverish 
 the soil; and the incessant drain on the natural pro- 
 ductive power of the soil amounted simply to down- 
 right robbery, committed by individuals at the expense 
 of the national property. 1 
 
 It might be thought that since 1857 we had improved 
 our methods of agriculture, and, true enough, we have 
 in some sections and with certain products. But the 
 old improvident system is still existent. The yield per 
 acre has changed but little, and an increase in one 
 cereal is met with a decrease in another, so that the 
 average remains about the same. Why ? Because the 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 145.
 
 WASTE 101 
 
 farmer of yesterday is substantially the farmer of to- 
 day. The present generation is doing what its an- 
 cestors did fifty years ago; it is cropping the soil and 
 putting practically nothing back in the way of plant- 
 food that is, fertilizers and manures. Worse yet; it 
 is, through the denudation of the ground, allowing the 
 richest soils to be washed into the rivers by the rains; 
 and, by superfluous irrigation, it is still further drowning 
 out and washing away the very life of the land. The 
 Agricultural Colleges are doing what they can to repair 
 the damage done to the Eastern farms; but they have 
 not yet stopped the destruction that is going on at this 
 moment among the Western farms. 
 
 For be it understood that the farmer is not one whit 
 different from the lumberman and the miner in reck- 
 lessness of methods, in the leaving one farm for an- 
 other, in taking up a new claim and working only the 
 best-paying part of it. He cropped the farms of the 
 East to exhaustion, and when they no longer yielded a 
 sufficient return, he quickly transferred himself to new 
 farms in the West, where he is now engaged in the 
 same old business of cropping to exhaustion. We have 
 heard much of the "abandoned farm" of recent years, 
 and have been told that the reason of the abandonment 
 was that the old folks died off and the sons refused to 
 stay on the farm, preferring the gayer life of the city. 
 No doubt this has proved true in many cases; but the 
 reason why the abandoned farm itself is no longer a 
 profitable investment must be apparent to everyone.
 
 102 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 The "pay vein" of it has been worked out, and what 
 remains is only "low-grade ore," to be left on the dump 
 heap for those who care to bother with it. And so 
 we have once more an illustration of the way the tender- 
 loin is removed and a suggestion of what happens to 
 the rest of the carcass. 
 
 One can find illustrations of this wanton waste this 
 cutting and slashing among the tall timber wherever 
 one chooses to look. The very extent of our oppor- 
 tunities has been our moral undoing. We have taken 
 only the best, and trampled down everything that is 
 merely "good" in the taking. And yet this is not the 
 final sum of our transgressions. We have practically 
 destroyed the "good," but what have we done with the 
 "best" which we took away? Have we conserved or 
 properly utilized, or even decently consumed, this ap- 
 proximate fifty per cent. ? The economists tell us that 
 "consumption is utilization," and that is generally true; 
 but there may be a consumption by fire that serves no 
 useful purpose, and there may be destruction by waste 
 that is equally useless. 
 
 The thousand details of waste in the arts and crafts, 
 in transportation, in commercial handling, are obviously 
 impossible to recite at this tune. Besides, everyone 
 knows about them in a general way out of his own ex- 
 perience. The rejection and ultimate destruction of 
 half-used or even unused materials by railways, steam- 
 boats, telegraph and telephone companies, trolley lines, 
 municipalities, states, the general government itself,
 
 WASTE 103 
 
 are matters of more or less common knowledge. Again, 
 it is common knowledge that every railway, or other 
 public service corporation, suffers in its property at the 
 hands of its patrons because of that malicious spirit 
 that finds expression in the saying: "The company is 
 rich; let it pay for it." It is always excuse enough with 
 the mob for the breaking and wrecking of things that 
 they are "company" things. Besides this, a large com- 
 pany suffers again by the extravagance of its officers 
 and employees. They do not have to pay for repairs 
 or new materials, therefore why should they be careful 
 of them ? The waste in the kitchen, over which every 
 housekeeper wrings her hands in despair, has its com- 
 plement in the company's office, warehouse, and shop. 
 In manufacturing there are now some very shrewd 
 economies practised in certain directions and some un- 
 intelligent extravagances in others ; but the necessity for 
 utilizing what are called "waste products" is being 
 forced upon the manufacturers by the practices and the 
 competition of foreign companies. All sorts of time- 
 saving and labor-saving devices have been in existence 
 with us for years, and they are being continually bet- 
 tered; but it was (comparatively) only yesterday that 
 product-saving devices were inaugurated. Nowadays 
 an oil or steel or coke corporation, a woollen mill or 
 shoe factory or meat-packing company, watches every 
 particle of refuse and utilizes materials to the utmost. 
 It is perhaps not so much complete consumption as 
 more dollars that they are after, but thrift of that kind
 
 104 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 is not to be sneered at or quarrelled with; it is to be 
 praised. 
 
 The distributors of manufactures the business men 
 and middlemen, both wholesale and retail are, on the 
 contrary, somewhat more reckless in their squandering 
 of materials. They waste good products and charge up 
 the waste to the consumer a business method hallowed 
 by tradition, if not by inspiration. For instance, it is 
 almost impossible to-day to buy any small thing of 
 personal or household need that does not come in some 
 sort of a prepared package, case, or cover, to be thrown 
 away after the contents have been used. It is expected 
 that the tin of peaches, the glass of pickles, the crockery 
 of cheese, and the barrel or box that comes with almost 
 everything, will go by way of the ash-can to the city 
 dump heaps. It seems a very small matter. But going 
 on continuously in twenty million families, the aggregate 
 of the destruction is unthinkable. And be it remem- 
 bered that it is destruction, and nothing else unneces- 
 sary destruction at that. 
 
 But into this matter of waste in small consumption 
 one cannot go. It is a vice usually charged up exclu- 
 sively to the rich; but the excesses of a few people 
 in spending large sums of money for flowers, dress, 
 jewels, dinners, balls, have given a false impression. 
 The extravagance of the rich is hardly to be com- 
 pared with the extravagance of the poor, for, in pro- 
 portion, the latter is much the greater. It is the waste 
 of the poor that keeps them poor. The farmer who
 
 WASTE 105 
 
 leaves his plough in the furrow and hangs his harness on 
 the fence for the winter; the mechanic who casts away 
 winter clothing in the spring, and throws the unused 
 hah* of a beefsteak to a huge dog under the table; the 
 mill hand who spends his week's wages in a saloon, 
 and the clerk who mortgages his house for an auto- 
 mobile, have few prototypes among the rich. They are 
 the most recklessly extravagant of all our population; 
 and they are the ones who are in dire want the first 
 Saturday night after the mill closes down. According 
 to the tables of wages received, unionized labor gets 
 more on an average than the professional classes, and 
 yet there is no doubt about the professional classes 
 living better and having more for the inevitable "rainy 
 day." This, I believe, is directly due to the spirit of 
 saving with the one, and the spirit of waste with the 
 other. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, to make an exception of 
 any class. A general indictment of all the American 
 people for waste and extravagance can be sustained. 
 No doubt it is a part of the "development" of the 
 country, a step in that somewhat problematical "prog- 
 ress" with which the optimists are always hopefully 
 endowing us. The optimist's hope is a very comforting 
 life-preserver, and we should hold fast to it; but the 
 very fact and circumstance of its existence might sug- 
 gest that perhaps we are "at sea" and in some danger. 
 There are two views to be taken even of hope.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 
 
 THE man who "develops" our natural resources to 
 the vanishing point has no notion of remaining forever 
 upon the immediate scene of the development. He and 
 his wife and children, as soon as they have made that 
 fortune, expect to quit work and go to live in the city. 
 The final goal of the nomads is the large city where 
 money can be properly disbursed and unspeakable 
 happiness received in exchange therefor. Naturally, 
 the water-power, or the mine, or the forest, or the 
 government range that is broken into to provide the 
 necessary million is not an object of their everlasting 
 solicitude. It is but a temporary abiding place; and so 
 what matters it how it looks or what its condition. It 
 will presently be behind them. They will not see it in 
 their new city home. 
 
 The cities, the large ones in particular, are being 
 recruited continually from the country. People who 
 have made money honestly and otherwise, people who 
 have "struck it rich" in oil or copper or concession or 
 franchise lucky men, business men, speculators, 
 swindlers, and fools are flocking into the cities more 
 106
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 107 
 
 and more each year. It is said that the city draws to 
 itself the best from the country; it might be said that 
 it also draws to itself the worst from the country. But 
 taken in the aggregate, good and bad together, the 
 numbers that come in from year to year are formidable; 
 and the money they bring with them is something 
 astounding. 
 
 They add not only to the population but to the 
 wealth, the energy, the life of the city. They also add 
 to its bad taste, its general hideousness, its restless- 
 ness, its improvidence, its viciousness. For be it re- 
 membered that the leopard does not change his 
 spots by being brought out of the jungle and put into a 
 cage, nor does the man who has "made his money out 
 West," in some mysterious never-to-be-explained man- 
 ner, lose his business methods, his lawlessness, and his 
 vulgarity the moment he occupies a home on a city 
 avenue. He brings to town all his native characteris- 
 tics plus his business acquirements, and it is to him 
 and his fellows that we may ascribe much of the bizarre 
 character of the modern city. 
 
 Once more, let us understand at the start that in the 
 building of the city, as in the development of the country, 
 there is a good as well as a bad side to be considered. 
 There are some cities in the United States that we are 
 not to be ashamed of cities perhaps like Buffalo or 
 Hartford, or Harrisburg or Baltimore, Denver or Los 
 Angeles or Washington. They are few, as yet, to be 
 sure; but many more are in the way of becoming
 
 108 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 tasteful, cleanly, and decent. Since the Chicago Fair 
 much public spirit has been awakened and municipal 
 art has been in the air. The arrangement of the White 
 City seemed to impress people with the possibilities of 
 unity, order, and beauty in more permanent materials; 
 and the idea of the city being an attractive and a livable 
 place as well as a place in which to do business, came 
 into existence. And it has borne fruit. Vast groups of 
 buildings, harmoniously arranged, have been put up, 
 in Pittsburgh, Washington, West Point, Annapolis, at 
 Columbia, Princeton and New York Universities, at 
 the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Cali- 
 fornia to mention only a few. Besides these, the huge 
 terminal railway stations for such cities as New York, 
 Washington, Chicago, and the public libraries, capitols, 
 court-houses, post-offices erected in many towns, have 
 afforded focal points of interest, points of departure in 
 the planning of new streets and buildings. These, in 
 connection with park-ways, open spaces for sculpture, 
 fountains, and various civic monuments, are all the 
 beginnings of a liking for municipal art, of a better and 
 nobler building of the city. 
 
 Moreover, though it is as yet a wish rather than a 
 fulfilment, it is a satisfaction to know that extensive 
 plans have been drawn for the revision and partial re- 
 construction of such large cities as New York, Phila- 
 delphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, 
 Harrisburg, Cleveland, Denver, San Francisco, Los 
 Angeles, Boston, Springfield, Kansas City, Baltimore,
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 109 
 
 Atlantic City. To this must be added practical results 
 in the making and extension of parks like Fairmount 
 Park, Philadelphia, Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, Pros- 
 pect Park, Brooklyn. And with the park idea must 
 be associated the happy thought of utilizing the natural 
 beauty of water effects (as in the Lake Fronts at Chi- 
 cago, Cleveland, and Buffalo, the Riverside and Lower 
 Bay drives in New York), and the general projection of 
 extensive boulevards outward from the cities along the 
 rivers and the hills. 
 
 These are all notable and noteworthy signs of prog- 
 ress. They are also promises of what is to come in 
 the way of better planning, better building, better 
 living in our cities. But encouraging as such progress 
 is, we are not to overestimate its present extent or its 
 possible influence. There are six hundred cities in the 
 United States of more than 8,000 inhabitants each, and 
 holding collectively about thirty-three per cent, of the 
 population of the land. Of the six hundred there are 
 hardly more than six that have seriously taken hold 
 of proper city building. Ninety per cent, of the cities 
 just "happened" or are now "happening." They usu- 
 ally start as villages in a casual and unpremeditated way 
 those along the water being born of a wooden dock 
 where boats could make a landing, and those in the 
 interior springing up along a cattle trail or a travelled 
 highway, or about a country post-office or near a water- 
 fall. From their birth to their death and cities with 
 us have been known to die their expansion is dictated
 
 110 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 by the expediency of the moment, combined with busi- 
 ness utility and the whim of individual owners. The 
 last thing thought of in connection with a city's growth 
 is a definite plan. By that I mean that a plan is de- 
 vised only after the city is built, and it then consists 
 largely of an expensive tearing down and making over 
 of what has already been done. 
 
 In the initial stage of the town building there are no 
 exits or entrances, no civic or neighborhood centres, 
 no parks, boulevards, or driveways. Everything is 
 very practical and for immediate use, with no nonsense 
 about art or the city beautiful. As people come in and 
 the town begins to "boom," it expands by pushing out- 
 ward streets and "blocks" of checker-board pattern. 
 It seems to be thought quite necessary to the "block" 
 city that the ground should be uniformly level, and 
 sometimes when it is not so naturally it is made so 
 artificially. Any stream bed, lake bed, valley, or marsh 
 that might be turned to account as so much natural 
 beauty, is regarded as a mere hole in the ground and 
 is filled up with refuse from the city. When the hol- 
 low is filled and levelled over, another " block," another 
 street, are mapped out, and the district is open to 
 settlement. 
 
 Whether "filled-in" or not, the average city expands, 
 more or less, upon its own dump heaps. The refuse 
 of the city is carted to the outskirts and there deposited, 
 and eventually these suburban dumping grounds be- 
 come incorporated in the city and are built upon. In
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 111 
 
 the order of their settlement the squatter follows close 
 upon the heels of the ash-cart man. A shanty town 
 springs up; then after a time it is destroyed by fire or 
 is torn down to make way, perhaps, for a row of mean- 
 looking tenements. With the tenements come the 
 saloon, the rag-and-bottle shop, the old-clothes place, 
 the cheap grocery store. Everything is built for the 
 moment, usually without sense or system, and without 
 regard for the comfort, health, or use of others. Wher- 
 ever land can be had there the individual erects what he 
 pleases. Of course, the air is soon foul, the water 
 supply contaminated, the streets filthy, the back yards 
 unspeakably feculent. Thus things continue until the 
 pressing demand of Business finally pushes tenements 
 and tenants further on, and proceeds to rebuild the 
 section with shops or factories. In the end Business 
 has its way, in city building as in other things, and it 
 pushes on and out churches, schools, colleges, and 
 private residences, as readily and as remorselessly as 
 it does the shanty and the rag-shop. 
 
 The final result of many varied and sporadic efforts is 
 "the business town." It is usually something of fear- 
 ful and wonderful make a conglomeration of wood, 
 brick, stone, and steel, in forms defiant of analysis. Yet 
 after much tinkering and political jobbery, it is not 
 without the semblance of things that are supposed to 
 be accompaniments of municipal dignity. There are 
 the pretentious city hall, the shop-made government 
 post-office, the irrepressible public library, the classic
 
 112 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 court-house, the barbaric school-house. In addition, 
 there are avenues paved with Belgian blocks, boule- 
 vards where the weeds are still growing, parks that are 
 decorated with flying papers and empty bottles, with 
 trolley-cars along the streets, iron bridges across the 
 rivers, and telegraph poles and wires everywhere. 
 Reading the description of such a city, written and sent 
 out by its Chamber of Commerce as advertising matter, 
 would lead one to think the place a small reproduction 
 of Paris or Berlin, but the reality is rather disappoint- 
 ing. Not even its soldiers' monument, its drinking 
 fountain, or the granite statue of its first city father 
 can elevate it to the plane of art. It is not beautiful; 
 nay, more, it is not comfortable or even a livable place. 
 It is a shop where people buy and sell, and all its plans 
 and purposes centre in and about Business. 
 
 The larger the place the more unlivable it is New 
 York and Chicago being about the most impossible 
 spots for the home-lover in the United States. In New 
 York wherever the resident goes Business chases him 
 with a store, a theatre, a hotel or a trolley. He is 
 forced to keep moving. The Battery (one of the most 
 attractive spots in the city) was long ago consecrated 
 to rapid transit and immigrants; Union and Madison 
 Squares are built up with hotels, shops and offices; 
 Fifth Avenue is the great retailers' head-quarters; the 
 rivers are given over to ships and slums; while Staten 
 Island, the most beautiful portion of the greater city, 
 has a shore line of'factories. The would-be-resident is
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 113 
 
 put to his wits to find a place where he can hold fast 
 temporarily. Around Central Park, on the upper East 
 Side, along the Riverside Drive, he still has isles of 
 refuge, but Business will eventually engulf them, drown 
 them out. 
 
 Of course, the shop, the office, and the factory are 
 useful and necessary things. But why have them 
 everywhere ? Is the world so small that a repair shop 
 must be crowded up against a hospital or a car-stable 
 against a school-house ? And why a girdle of factories 
 about the fairest island in the finest harbor in the 
 world ? Why, at the entrance gate of the richest coun- 
 try in the world the smoke and smell of iron, oil, chem- 
 icals, and fertilizers ? The uses of an ash-can are not 
 to be denied, but there is no sense in placing it in the 
 front hallway of the house. 
 
 New York is not peculiar in this respect. All the 
 large cities are more or less alike; and wherever you 
 go in them the saloon, for example, is threatening the 
 church, the store is pushing into the residence district, 
 and the factory is flinging soot in the face of the college. 
 All the accessory annoyances follow after. There is 
 the whir of machinery, the shriek of whistles, the clang 
 of bells, the strident grind of trolleys, the jar of trucks 
 and carts, the vast uproar of the city for which Business 
 is so largely responsible. 
 
 And the dirt! It is not in the street and the gutter 
 alone, but in the air, and against the blue sky. Pitts- 
 burgh or Cincinnati or Cleveland or St. Louis are
 
 114 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 merely the obvious illustrations of it. All the cities 
 are more or less foul, and all of them have those 
 plague spots, the tenements, where Crime is bred and 
 Disease flourishes, and Misery, 
 
 " like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along." 
 
 It is not an injustice to attribute most of these annoy- 
 ances and dangers to Business and its methods. In- 
 deed, the commercial men would not deny it. They 
 rather rejoice in the thought that they have monopolized 
 things, that they are in the saddle and masters of the 
 situation. Business has never been modest, and never 
 by any chance ashamed. Look at its boastful ad- 
 vertisements or rather escape looking at them if you 
 can! The newspapers and magazines are mere thin 
 butterings of reading matter between two huge slices 
 of business announcements. Again, look at its signs 
 or escape them if you can ! Every available spot where 
 human eyes could wander seems occupied by a sign 
 setting forth in exaggerated language the merits of a 
 face powder, a patent razor, or an alleged Scotch 
 whiskey. Signs in wood and glass and metal, signs in 
 gold, silver, and brass, signs animate and inanimate 
 jump at the passer-by like a mad dog or fix him with a 
 maniacal glitter from their niche. At night the be- 
 wilderment is increased by the ingenious application of 
 electricity. Lights in rows make up huge letters ten 
 feet or more in height, designs of articles for sale are 
 outlined with lights, and colored glasses are brought in
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 115 
 
 to heighten the effect. Then there is the additional 
 ingenuity of moving, dancing lights to make one 
 dizzy. A table water in a huge tumbler continues to 
 effervesce in bubbles of light all night long, flashes of 
 lightning point the way to some one's vaudeville per- 
 formance, or against the sky a waving banner is struck 
 by an electric search-light to call your attention to a 
 new brand of soap. 
 
 It does not lessen the annoyance of the sign in the 
 least to be told that Paris and London are "just as 
 bad" in this respect as New York or Chicago. Why, 
 either here or there, should one have some shopkeeper's 
 business flung in his face every time he steps out of his 
 house? Why should people be allowed to flash their 
 wares into your brain with a sign or blare them into 
 your ear with a band? Has the passer-by no rights 
 that the business man is bound to respect? It was 
 Ruskin who insisted that the exterior of your home is 
 not private property in the sense that you could annoy 
 your neighbors with its ugliness. The contention might 
 be urged with greater force against the shop and its 
 signs. The law recognizes nuisances in bad smells, 
 unwonted noises, intolerable smoke, and upon suffi- 
 cient evidence, the courts will abate them; but a ner- 
 vous person may be driven to the point of suicide by 
 hideous moving signs, and yet have no redress. The 
 only thing the self-respecting or nervous can do is to 
 change the scene by moving into the country. 
 
 These annoyances of the city, which are amusement
 
 116 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 to the ignorant and the idle, are fast driving the better 
 class of people out of town. The soot and dust, the 
 glitter and flash, the clang and clatter, with the inevit- 
 able heart-disease hurry all of them the peculiar 
 properties of modern Business make the town un- 
 bearable. So out in the suburbs the citizen goes, hotly 
 pursued by the newspapers, the ash-cart man, and the 
 sign. Everywhere that abominable sign to shout at 
 you about pickles or cough-drops or corsets ! The line 
 of railway by which you travel has a row of huge signs 
 on either side of it, where you see all sorts of hideous 
 devices in color which are calculated to impress upon 
 your soft head the excellence of some one's catsup or 
 malted milk or cheap-as-dirt clothing. As you draw 
 away from the city and into the country the fences 
 become decorated with invitations to put your money 
 into certain shoes; the farmers' barns tell the wonders 
 of oils and purgative pills; and the trees have signs 
 nailed into them with poems, not about apple blossoms, 
 as in Japan, but about unrusting fly-screens and soups 
 in cans. 
 
 When the railway is left behind and the suburbanite 
 is on his own premises, under his own elms and maples, 
 is he completely shut out and away from all things 
 commercial ? Hardly. The country trolley rushes by 
 his door, and into the night he hears the clang of its 
 gong and the grinding of its wheels on a curve. And 
 long ago the telegraph and the telephone overtook him, 
 even though in doing so they found it necessary to cut
 
 THE BUSINESS TOWN 117 
 
 the tops off the trees along the country roads that 
 interfered with their wires. Every Sunday, when the 
 suburbanite goes for a walk, he sees those long rows of 
 ruined trees, he studies the progress of the sign, the 
 encroachment of the factory, the increase of trolleys 
 and autos. What wonder if at night he gets out an 
 atlas and talks sadly to himself about "trekking" to 
 Mexico or taking a voyage around the Horn for his 
 health! Anything to get away from what is neither 
 savagery nor civilization, but the barbarism of Business 
 lying in between. 
 
 All this is a familiar tale to the resident in or near 
 the large city. If one cared to describe the smaller 
 towns in the Middle or Far West the picture would not 
 be very different. They are a little more careless, a 
 little more sordid that is all. In all of them the 
 money ideal is in the ascendant, Business is placed 
 upon a pedestal; and the things of the mind and the 
 spirit are merely to suckle fools and chronicle small 
 beer. 
 
 It is these cities and towns throughout the land that 
 speak for our civilization and enlightenment. They 
 and the country without are the net result of our 
 wealth what we have built up and saved, over and 
 above expenditures. Are they quite worthy of the 
 wealthiest nation on earth? We are proud enough of 
 our country's climate, resources, and natural beauties; 
 but we are always offering apologies about our youth- 
 fulness and the necessity for more time when it comes
 
 118 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 to a question of what we have done to improve our 
 birthright. As a matter of fact we are just a bit 
 ashamed of the little we have done, the little we have 
 given back to the land. And that spirit of humiliation 
 may some day lead us on to better things and nobler 
 actions.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 
 
 IT may be accepted as a fact that the pursuit of 
 wealth is the ruling passion of our people. Every one 
 knows it through a vast superfluity of daily illustration. 
 It is forced upon us whichever way we may turn, even 
 if we are not smitten by the madness ourselves. It 
 pervades all classes, and has been with us for many 
 years. And yet for all our association and familiarity 
 with money there is a singular confusion of thought 
 regarding it. Those who are without it have exag- 
 gerated ideas of its value and what it will do; but in- 
 asmuch as those who have it are equally mistaken about 
 its nature there is small reason for sneering at any one's 
 ignorance. Perhaps we had better go back to an ele- 
 mentary understanding of it, even if in doing so we have 
 to toss all the accepted economic theories out of the 
 window. 
 
 The first sharp line of distinction to be drawn is be- 
 tween wealth and money. This is necessary because 
 the common idea is that they are synonymous one with 
 the other; and that they mean cash in bank, or stocks 
 and bonds in a deposit vault. Wealth, of course, does 
 119
 
 120 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 not lie in these paper bundles, but in the farm, the mine, 
 the mill, the railway, the water-power; in buildings, 
 bridges, viaducts, subways; in the residences of citi- 
 zens, their warehouses and stocks of goods, their ships 
 and docks and depots all of them things of use and 
 value, or of earning capacity. Money is but the cer- 
 tificate, the token, the symbol of this wealth issued to 
 or by the individual, the company, the municipality, or 
 the government, to show who controls or commands 
 it. The confusion of the reality with its sign or token 
 was to have been expected. Every religion has furnished 
 its quota of adherents who have worshipped the stone 
 or picture itself rather than the deity it symbolized. 
 
 Gold (and in ratio, silver) is both wealth and money 
 combined; first, because it has specific value as metal 
 for use in the arts; secondly, because it is actually in 
 circulation as money. It is not a certificate or token 
 of value, and has no promise-to-pay stamped upon it; 
 on the contrary, it is value and payment in one. As a 
 commodity and as a money used in exchange it is thus 
 quite exceptional, in a class by itself. We must not, 
 however, allow our distinction between wealth and 
 money to be disturbed because gold is used sometimes 
 as one, sometimes as the other, and sometimes as both. 
 
 We now come to a second proposition, that none of 
 these things neither wealth, money, nor gold is of 
 any value whatever unless it is in use. Here again we 
 meet with a very common misunderstanding. It is 
 actually thought by some people that the millionaire
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 121 
 
 has strong boxes filled with his gold, locked up in 
 deposit vaults; and the more ignorant still believe that 
 he keeps his money in the cellar under the coal heap. 
 The novelist's miser gloating over his hoard is an in- 
 eradicable picture in the mind of the populace. But 
 every one knows what happens to the miser of fiction. 
 He starves to death because he will not use any of his 
 hoard. And that is what would happen to the million- 
 aire of fact if he had all his wealth in gold and declined 
 to put it, or any money certificates of it, into circulation. 
 How, then, is unused gold in a box any more valuable 
 than undiscovered gold in the bosom of the earth? 
 Tons of minted coin the finest of American eagles or 
 British sovereigns would be worth on a deserted 
 island no more than so many tons of island rock. It 
 must be in use to have value. 
 
 This is equally true of wealth itself. If the farm 
 were abandoned, the mill shut down, the mine closed, 
 the warehouse locked and barred, the ships tied up at the 
 docks, the goods left unused, what would be the value 
 of any of them? The finest "plant" of the largest 
 trust in America, if marooned at the North Pole, would 
 be quite as worthless as the foundations of ice beneath 
 it ; and so the most beautiful of our cities, if untenanted 
 and unused, would be of no more value than the pin- 
 nacles of the neighboring mountains. The general in- 
 ference is unmistakable. Unless the rich man's 
 wealth and money are being used, they are only so much 
 rubbish encumbering the earth.
 
 122 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 Therefore, I cannot at all agree with an anonymous 
 economist, recently writing in the North American 
 Review, 1 who keeps asking in substance, the question: 
 "How much money should a man by his abilities be 
 allowed to withdraw from the common store ?" In the 
 first place, there is no "common store" in America all 
 money being in the possession of individuals or govern- 
 ments; and, in the second place, no one can "with- 
 draw" money from common use without rendering it 
 useless. As regards wealth as distinguished from 
 money, every man, whether rich or poor, has certain 
 articles of property, such as houses, clothing, furniture, 
 which may fairly enough be accounted "withdrawn" 
 in the sense that they are only for private use. These 
 should include such wealth as diamonds, pictures, and 
 rugs which require practically no expenditure in their 
 daily use; but not horses, autos, yachts, dinners and 
 balls which put money in circulation (foolishly, if 
 you will) as a necessity of their existence. We shall 
 see anon that this withdrawing to privacy of wealth in 
 pictures and gems is limited both in extent and in en- 
 joyment; and we shall also see that the rich man's 
 autos and dinners are of limited enjoyment too. A 
 man can only eat, drink, and "live up" so much; 
 and if he carries the indulgence to excess he soon 
 arrives at the point where he can do none of these 
 things. But let us get back to our general proposi- 
 
 i"An Appeal to Millionaires," in North American Review, 
 June, 1906.
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 123 
 
 tion that neither wealth nor money is of value unless 
 used. 
 
 If the millions of the millionaire require use to make 
 them valuable, then the next proposition follows of 
 itself. The millions cannot be used without benefiting 
 other people as well as their owner. The most con- 
 demned and foolish expenditures of the rich, those for 
 champagne or flowers or dress, for instance, still benefit 
 the wine-growers, the florists and the dress-makers. It 
 is not the best expenditure, of course, because the 
 result of the labor disappears quickly, does not add to 
 the permanent wealth of the country, but it nevertheless 
 puts money in use. It is not, however, like building a 
 Pacific Railway. Here millions of money are spent in 
 establishing a permanent transportation line, and liter- 
 ally millions of people are benefited by the expenditure. 
 It is not solely the millionaire who invests, or the officers 
 who are employed in the work, or the bond-holders and 
 stock-holders who get dividends ; but it is the thousands 
 of workmen who get wages, the shippers of goods at 
 either end of the line, and every man in every town 
 through which the road runs, and every farmer whose 
 farm borders upon it. It rightly and properly "de- 
 velops" the country, not for the sole gain of a Hill or a 
 Villard or a Huntington; but for the benefit of all the 
 people in the country. 
 
 This is equally true of every respectable industrial or 
 commercial enterprise of whatever nature. They are 
 helping and benefiting others besides the so-called
 
 124 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 "owner." Of course, the popular idea still prevails 
 that a Rockefeller, for instance, is worth so many 
 hundreo!s of millions, and that he sits in a luxurious 
 home, and somehow feeds upon his money. People 
 will not grasp the elementary fact that his millions are 
 in the oil industry, hi wells and pipes, in fleets of steam- 
 ers, in railways, in warehouses, in various subsidiary 
 enterprises; and that this great industry is not alone 
 for Mr. Rockefeller or the thousands of other stock- 
 holders, great and small, but for the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of people who get wages and salaries and per- 
 centages and profits from it. It is safe to say that prac- 
 tically every dollar of the Rockefeller money is at work 
 hi some industrial or business enterprise at work not 
 only for Mr. Rockefeller, but for thousands of others. 
 Stop the Standard Oil Corporation, stop the mills of 
 the United States Steel Corporation, stop the Pennsyl- 
 vania Railroad, and with a million of men lacking 
 wages, salaries, and dividends, there would be a swift 
 realization of the fact that profit and loss in these enter- 
 prises are shared by the community as well as by the 
 millionaire. 
 
 One more illustration. The Duke of Buccleuch is 
 one of the largest land-holders in Great Britain, his 
 dominion extending some thirty miles or more in length, 
 and comprising some 460,000 acres. He is the owner 
 of the land in fee, but hi its direction he is only the 
 manager, the overseer and a very hard-worked over- 
 seer at that, since he is continually putting into prac-
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 125 
 
 tice new ideas with modern machinery. There are 
 three thousand tenants, living well and happily, even 
 profitably, upon his estate. There is said to be not a 
 single case of poverty or distress among them, so ex- 
 cellent is the management, so perfect the husbandry, 
 of the estate. The duke, by his indefatigable energy 
 and direction has developed his property to the utmost, 
 not perhaps so much for himself as for his tenantry. 
 They have benefited by his profound study of agri- 
 culture and machinery, as well as by his real estate 
 and invested capital. Old man as he now is, I am told, 
 he is still on horseback at eight every morning, riding 
 his estates to find where some waste may be stopped, 
 some odd acre made to bear more, or some new indus- 
 try established. A few years ago, in travelling across 
 his property, a haphazard American acquaintance in 
 the car, having heard that the duke owned some hun- 
 dreds of thousands of acres, remarked with consider- 
 able emphasis to an Englishman sitting beside him 
 that he thought the duke ought to be shot. The 
 reason he gave for his belief was that "no person 
 ought to own so much property." To this, being 
 quite nonplussed, I ventured only an extravagance in 
 kind to the effect that if the duke could manage the 
 whole world as successfully as his own estate, I should 
 be in favor of giving it to him. 
 
 For now we are coming to still another related 
 proposition, namely: that the millionaire, whether a 
 land-holder or a stock-holder, is also a trust-holder. To
 
 126 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 summarize former statements, if money and wealth are 
 not put to a proper use they become worthless ; if they 
 are put to a proper use, they must benefit others. 
 Therefore the word "owner," if by it is meant the ex* 
 elusive possession of wealth or money, is a misnomer, 
 and the word "trustee" is more appropriate. The 
 millionaire, by his certificates of stock, controls and 
 manages, but he does not own a railway or a mill in 
 the same sense in which he does a picture or a piano. 
 He can sell one as readily perhaps as the other, but his 
 selling the railway merely passes on the management 
 to another, and does not change the character of the 
 ownership. The dozen millionaires who are vaguely 
 said to "own" one-twelfth of the wealth of the United 
 States might "control" the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
 but they must do so as trustees for one hundred thou^ 
 sand employees and many thousands of small stock- 
 holders, to say nothing of the community at large. If 
 they benefit themselves individually by a wise control 
 of the road they must benefit also those who are 
 connected with it. If the control is not wise, they not 
 only lose money themselves, but all the other interested 
 parties lose with them. There can be no absolutely 
 selfish or personal use made of such property without 
 producing financial disaster. 
 
 One of the more prominent of the millionaires has 
 said something about this trusteeship that will bear re- 
 peating. In his Gospel of Wealth Mr. Carnegie states his 
 belief that it is the duty of the man of wealth "to con-
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 127 
 
 sider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as 
 trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and 
 strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the 
 manner which in his judgment is best calculated to 
 produce the most beneficial results for the community * 
 the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and 
 agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service 
 his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to admin- 
 ister, doing for them better than they would or could 
 do for themselves." 
 
 Few people will be found to quarrel with that state- 
 ment. It is sound and true enough gospel. The only 
 trouble with it is that it does not go far enough. The 
 man of wealth is not a should-be, but a must-be, trustee 
 he is a trustee for all his brethren, rich and poor 
 alike, whether he wishes to be or not. As long as he 
 holds control and uses his wealth wisely it must be for 
 the benefit of others as well as himself. But does 
 he always use it wisely? Emphatically no! He is 
 sometimes a thoroughly bad trustee, sometimes a 
 foolish one, sometimes a good one; but good, bad, or 
 foolish, he is still trustee a conditional owner of 
 wealth. These different phases of trusteeship should 
 be briefly illustrated to show how they are regarded, 
 not only by the public, but by the law of the land. 
 
 The use of money to make "combinations in re- 
 straint of trade," to create monopolies or tariffs that 
 benefit one class at the expense of other classes, to ob- 
 tain rebates or other unfair commercial advantage, to
 
 128 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 engineer stock operations in short, to promote any 
 form of swindling, gambling, or cheating will suggest 
 the trusteeship badly OT corruptly administered. Every 
 one condemns this use of wealth; and the courts take 
 cognizance of it tc the extent of forbidding by injunc- 
 tion, fining heavily, and even dissolving combinations 
 that thus misuse their power. It is, indeed, a much- 
 mooted question if the general government has not a 
 right to wrest the trusteeship from those corporations 
 that violate the Inter-State Commerce Act, if it has not 
 a right to confiscate property wrongfully and illegally 
 administered by its owners. The question has yet to 
 be decided by the courts, and the decision will be 
 watched with interest, since it may prove the entering 
 wedge of a perhaps undesirable government ownership 
 a trusteeship located in the government instead of 
 in the individual. 
 
 Money withdrawn from use and hoarded is another 
 illustration of a trusteeship badly managed. It benefits 
 no one, not even the hoarder. The "wicked and 
 slothful servant'' who hid his talent in the earth was 
 condemned for this very thing; but the prodigal son, 
 who spent his substance in riotous living, was forgiven, 
 because he was merely foolish. So, to-day, the miser is 
 despised by all, but the young millionaire who ad- 
 ministers his trust by lavish expenditures foi wine, 
 women, and song; yachts, autos, and horses; functions, 
 flowers, and fripperies is accounted merely a blethering 
 idiot who will probably some day come to his senses.
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 129 
 
 In the meantime, a certain latitude in abusing his 
 trusteeship is allowed the prodigal, legally as well as 
 morally. But he is not to go too far. If he becomes 
 an habitual drunkard, an incompetent spendthrift, or 
 a person non compos mentis, the courts will intervene 
 and take his trusteeship out of his hands by appointing 
 a guardian. However, the trusteeship foolishly ad- 
 ministered is usually tolerated by the law, if not by the 
 moral sense of the people, but it is never praised 
 except by folly itself. 
 
 Of the trusteeship properly handled there are count- 
 less examples; but, contrary to the general belief, in- 
 discriminate giving for charity is not among them. It 
 is safe to say that there is more harm than good done 
 by the generously-disposed person whose means are in 
 inverse ratio to his brains. Indigency and pauperism 
 are plants of quick growth, and need only a very little 
 encouragement. Giving, however, for purposes that 
 stimulate or educate or cultivate, or otherwise benefit 
 the public is not only proper and right administration, 
 but philanthropy in the bargain. The country in par- 
 ticular and the world in general are certainly the 
 better for good hospitals, libraries, museums, uni- 
 versities, technical schools, churches, music halls, 
 parks, and other institutions of a like nature. They 
 serve the whole public and they better the whole 
 community. 
 
 Of this giving (which is merely a transfer of the 
 trusteeship, usually to a municipality or a board of direc-
 
 130 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 tors) there have been many notable examples in America. 
 It is altogether to the credit of the much-abused mil- 
 lionaire that he has given for various purposes not hun- 
 dreds or thousands, but millions; and with a willing- 
 ness quite unparalleled in the history of philanthropy. 
 There is often a question raised, however, whether the 
 money has been given wisely or foolishly this being 
 usually dependent upon whether the questioner is or is 
 not interested in the object of the gift. And, aside 
 from that, giving of any sort may be economically 
 questioned in another way. It is proverbially bad 
 manners to question gifts, but let us make a venture 
 in rudeness. 
 
 The philanthropist cannot give money in one direc- 
 tion without foregoing or stopping its use in other 
 directions. For instance, Mr. Rockefeller donates a 
 million dollars to the University of Chicago. It goes 
 into the building fund of the university, and eventually 
 perhaps several college halls stand on the grounds as the 
 equivalent of the money. These are of benefit to the 
 university, they have value and use to students and 
 faculty alike; and, besides, they add to the wealth and 
 goodly appearance of the city. Everybody concurs in 
 thinking the gift a good one, and Mr. Rockefeller is 
 praised for his generosity. But let us suppose that he 
 does something else with that million something of a 
 purely business nature. Suppose he establishes with 
 it a shoe or button factory in Chicago and gives em- 
 ployment to five hundred or a thousand people in the
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 131 
 
 slum district enables them to make a decent living. 
 Is he not now a benefactor of mankind, and that, too, 
 notwithstanding he holds the title of the property in 
 his own hands, and talks no commonplaces about 
 philanthropy ? Of course, his critics would say that he 
 was "a grasping plutocrat" trying to add to his riches, 
 keeping wealth in his own hands for his own use; but, 
 being a very competent trustee of that million of dollars, 
 why should he not keep it in his own hands instead of 
 turning it over to some college board of less com- 
 petency? And why is he not benefiting others by his 
 "grasping" business undertaking? 
 
 Let us consider another case with which the public 
 is very familiar. Mr. Carnegie has given, let us say, 
 a hundred million dollars for libraries. The money 
 has gone into buildings that have been put up in 
 public places, in many towns and cities. There is not 
 a particle of doubt that these buildings are of use, that 
 they beautify their respective towns, and that the 
 libraries have been of educational value in the coun- 
 try. The giving is accounted a wise use of money, 
 and Mr. Carnegie has been, and must be, applauded 
 for both wisdom and generosity. But now suppose, 
 again, that he had put his one hundred million dol- 
 lars into the building of a railway from Mexico City 
 through Central America and the Isthmus into South 
 America as far down as Argentina. Suppose that this 
 undertaking caused the placing of permanent tracks, 
 bridges, viaducts, furnished permanent employment
 
 132 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 to one hundred thousand men, opened up a new country 
 to settlement, made possible homes and livings for fifty 
 millions of people. What now ? Would not this be a 
 wise trusteeship, though Mr. Carnegie still held control 
 of the stock and bonds? Of course, no one would 
 applaud him, he would only be "a shrewd business 
 man" to some, and "an octopus" threatening the very 
 life of the nation to others ; but, nevertheless, would he 
 not be quite as much of a benefactor to mankind at 
 large, with his railway as with his libraries ? 
 
 To that last question there is a yes-and-no answer. 
 The people in the community who are stickling for the 
 intellectual and moral side of life will answer in the 
 negative. They will say that the railway project has 
 to do with the material phase of civilization only, that 
 it means more "business," more money-making, more 
 consumption, and that we have enough of these with 
 us already. They will insist that we need to develop 
 man's higher nature with books, art, music, science, 
 rather than his lower nature with much food, drink, 
 and pleasure. With all of that I am in perfect accord. 
 These pages have been written to support such an 
 idea. But the argument must not be overdriven, nor 
 the idea carried to an extreme. There can be no ig- 
 noring of the material side of life. The physical man 
 is the foundation of the intellectual. You cannot make 
 a man think his best on an empty stomach. Besides, 
 the animal in us deserves just as much support and 
 education as the mental in us. Neither is to be de-
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 133 
 
 spised, but both are to be properly cultivated. The 
 extreme of either is open to criticism. Just at present 
 there is entirely too much of the commercial and the 
 material in American life, but we shall not help our 
 cause or get nearer to the normal by rushing to the 
 other end of the seesaw. The Carnegie libraries are 
 of value to the community, and the supposed Carnegie 
 railway through South America would be of value too. 
 Either of them should be considered a wise use of 
 money a trusteeship properly administered. 
 
 It may be objected that these illustrations apply only 
 to capital and do not deal with the fabulous incomes 
 of the very rich; that a man with ten millions a year 
 is not a trustee, but a consumer of that amount. Not 
 so. Most of the gifts of the millionaires are from 
 income rather than from capital. They are continually 
 reinvesting or starting new enterprises with their surplus 
 means. Even if income is deposited in the banks or the 
 trust companies, it is still in use, for it is being loaned 
 out by them. Neither capital nor income lies idle. The 
 best use of money by the millionaire trustee is, perhaps, 
 that in which he keeps the capital at work in furnish- 
 ing material welfare to wage-earners and others, but 
 applies the income to the advancement of intellectual 
 things. Mr. Carnegie's gift of twelve million dollars 
 to aid scientific, historic, and philosophic research is an 
 instance of this. He gave the twelve millions in United 
 States Steel Corporation bonds to a board of trustees 
 for administration. The wealth is still at Pittsburgh
 
 134 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 in the mills of the Carnegie Steel Company, the money 
 (the paper token in bonds) is in the hands and under the 
 control of the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation, the 
 income is being used in research looking to the intel- 
 lectual betterment of mankind. 
 
 But we may pause for the moment with the con- 
 clusion that the rich man is a trustee of wealth, whether 
 he so desires or not, adding only this further suggestion, 
 that since wealth must be administered for the benefit 
 of the many it is perhaps as well that it should remain 
 in the hands of one man of experience and executive 
 ability, as in the keeping of a thousand of less experience 
 and less ability. The Duke of Buccleuch knows how 
 to handle his trust of land, as Mr. Carnegie his trust 
 of a great industry. Therefore, why not let them 
 handle? Could the thousands of tenants and wage- 
 earners control and administer for themselves as well ? 
 It is doubtful. The argument for restricting individual 
 control, by limiting fortunes to a hundred thousand or 
 a million dollars, is not strong. Besides, there are 
 serious disadvantages to be considered. How will you 
 carry through great enterprises like trans-American 
 railways when no man has more than a hundred thou- 
 sand dollars with which to take the initiative ? Would 
 it be possible to construct tunnels under the Hudson 
 River at New York by passing around the hat for 
 thousand-dollar subscriptions ? 
 
 One may not admire plutocracy. Generally speak- 
 ing, the materialism of it is depressing, its arrogance is
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE, TRUSTEE 135 
 
 galling, and the low ideals of many of its members are 
 contemptible. But it nevertheless has its uses, is per- 
 haps necessary to modern life, and very often is to be 
 credited with wise action and true philanthropy.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 
 
 IF the contention of the preceding chapter is correct, 
 it may be pertinently asked: What, then, is the value 
 of great wealth ? How does it profit a man to gain the 
 whole world if he cannot enclose it with a fence and 
 keep others off the premises? Why bother with a 
 trusteeship with the handling of millions for the 
 benefit of the unthinking, and perhaps the unthanking ? 
 
 To such questions there may be several answers or 
 explanations. Some of the millionaires may agree with 
 Mr. Carnegie that their wealth is something they are 
 "strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the 
 manner which, in their judgment, is best calculated to 
 produce the most beneficial results for the community." 
 There are others who have had the responsibility of 
 wealth thrust upon them by inheritance or business 
 circumstances, and cannot in decency to their family, 
 their associates, or their compatriots, shirk it. There 
 are still others who, for this or that reason of a per- 
 sonal or exceptional nature, continue to hold and to 
 add to their holdings. But, .aside from these million- 
 aires, there are quite a number of the very wealthy who 
 136
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 137 
 
 have a different reason for retaining control of their 
 wealth. It gives them power. 
 
 This is not a new conception of the value of money. 
 In fact, it is a very old one, but its application in mod- 
 ern life is even more marked than in the days of Croesus 
 or Maecenas. The man to-day who controls half a 
 billion of dollars is, or may be, almost as far-reaching 
 in his power as a king of England or a president of the 
 United States. It is possible for him, with such wealth, 
 to be a pillar of strength in the financial and commercial 
 world, to undertake great railway and steamship enter- 
 prises, to develop new industries and mechanisms; or 
 to be a philanthropist, a first citizen, a promoter of 
 public improvements, a founder of national institutions. 
 Many of the rich are ambitious to do good with their 
 wealth, if they knew how; and others are at least 
 well-disposed toward their fellow-man, and put their 
 money to such uses as they think will produce per- 
 manent betterment. The idea of the masses that the 
 rich man is always either a fool or a knave, generally 
 the latter, is by no means well founded. Of course, 
 any one of us could spend his money to greater advan- 
 tage that needs no argument; but, possibly, if we 
 were in his place we might find that there are some 
 difficulties in the way of wise money-expenditure, some 
 problems in the administration of wealth that are still 
 seeking solution. 
 
 The reverse of such disposition and action is the 
 use of money power by the vicious for the promotion
 
 138 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 of their own selfish schemes. This is, unfortunately, 
 too common for denial or even discussion. The 
 corrupt millionaire has many tunes used his wealth 
 to ruin competing industries, to wreck railways, to loot 
 banks and trust companies, to buy up legislation 
 in short, to commit many assaults on honesty and 
 decency, and still by artful dodging keep out of the 
 penitentiary. Nor are the financial buccaneers all of 
 Wall Street nativity. The recent investigations into 
 the methods pursued by officers of banks and in- 
 surance companies, by directors of beef, oil, lumber, 
 and tobacco trusts, by men in control of trolley com- 
 panies and public franchises, are still fresh in the 
 public memory. That Mr. Roosevelt's administration 
 has been considered hostile to trusts, and that the 
 majority of the people in the country have applauded 
 this hostility, suggests of itself that there is a deep- 
 seated feeling against those who are in control of large 
 money power a feeling that at least they are danger- 
 ous to the community. 
 
 It may be said that many of the government prose- 
 cutions of the trusts have been ill-advised, that some of 
 the business vices nominated in the Inter-State Com- 
 merce Act were once esteemed business virtues; and 
 that those who are urging on the government to still 
 further action are not after the sin but the sinner. 
 There is, no doubt, some truth in that. We have a way 
 of correcting our financial or political malefactors only 
 once in a dozen years, but doing it then with an axe.
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 139 
 
 We allow millionaires to accumulate wealth by ques- 
 tionable methods, and then flay them, not for their 
 methods, but their millions. There is some of the 
 spirit of human envy in this, but back of it there is also 
 a fear of the money power. The desire to cripple or 
 restrain that power is apparent in all the foolish acts of 
 the state legislatures, in the talk of the great Half- 
 Baked about government control, limitations to wealth, 
 communistic holdings, and the like. The unwise, and 
 the corrupt millionaires have brought the trusteeship of 
 wealth into bad repute. 
 
 Still, there is a great deal of unnecessary cracking of 
 the whip over all this. There are thousands of honest 
 men in trusts and railways who have never been in- 
 vestigated, and hundreds of millionaires who have 
 benefited, not harmed, their fellow-men. But the sun- 
 pie annals of the rich do not make the best capital for 
 politicians, nor do they furnish the most fetching sort 
 of scare-heads for the daily press. There is more 
 shouting in the land over one millionaire that goeth 
 astray than over the ninety-nine that keep to the road. 
 This may be a very proper precaution on the part of 
 the public, a safeguarding of the general interest as 
 opposed to that of the individual; but it brings no 
 great joy to the millionaire. Good or bad, he is watched 
 with suspicion; he is thought to have acquired his 
 millions in some crooked way, and in any event he is 
 considered too rich to be honest. Just at present he 
 is a very much harried person. Under investigation
 
 140 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 he sometimes collapses, dies suddenly, or perhaps com- 
 mits suicide. The ridicule of the press, the anathemas 
 of the mob, the severity of the courts, are too much 
 for him. Humanity cannot stand up under such a 
 strain. Even in times of peace, with a good con- 
 science, a good name, and public respect, the rich 
 man must wonder at times if his power is worth the 
 having, if all his wealth compensates for all his work 
 and worry, if standing in the lime-light surrounded 
 by a crowd is as wholesome or as agreeable as stand- 
 ing in the sunlight quite alone. 
 
 Yet there are plenty of people who are eager enough 
 to step into the millionaire's shoes. Almost every youth 
 in the land admires him, and has the ambition to be 
 like him. The country boy no longer carries Washing- 
 ton or Webster in his mind's eye. He has been told 
 that the day of speech-making is past, and that now 
 money is the only thing that "talks." He wants to be 
 a great financier, or a captain of industry, or a trust 
 magnate; he aspires to be a Carnegie or a Rockefeller 
 or a Morgan. Of course, not one in a hundred thou- 
 sand of his type ever arrives. Each one has over- 
 estimated his own ability and underestimated the 
 difficulties of acquiring wealth. At forty, perhaps, the 
 whilom youth realizes that if he can get enough money 
 to keep the wolf from the door in old age he will be 
 accomplishing a good deal. He has been honest and 
 decent all his life, perhaps, paying his debts, living re- 
 spectably, and in a fair way toward dying respected.
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 141 
 
 He had not the ability to rise to great heights. In 
 boyhood he shot his arrows at the stars (as many of us 
 have) and missed them (as most of us do), but he is 
 not a failure for all that. It is something to have been 
 just a plain decent citizen. 
 
 Unfortunately for us as a people, we have not enough 
 of plain decent citizens. We have too many of just 
 plain money-grubbers who intend to get money by 
 hook or by crook, by decent or indecent methods, by 
 fair means or by foul. Let us not deceive ourselves in 
 thinking that all the "undesirable citizens" are mil- 
 lionaires, that all the malefactors are big and influen- 
 tial. The little rascals are more prevalent in numbers 
 and more unscrupulous in methods, since they are not 
 in that fierce light that beats upon the throne. Some of 
 them are, perhaps in the incipient stage at the moment, 
 but eventually they will arrive at full-fledged rascality, 
 if not to unlimited wealth. For instance, the surface 
 car companies of New York City report that they have 
 to discharge their three thousand conductors twice 
 over each year for failure to register fares. Whenever 
 or wherever anything is so eagerly sought for as 
 money in America to-day, it is sure to give rise to 
 tricky methods and unfair dealings among all classes. 
 
 Just now, no enterprise is too low, no business is too 
 disreputable to embark in, if it will pay. One mar- 
 vels at the mean ambitions of men, at the things they 
 will do to get money. And, strange enough, the man 
 who is engaged in some questionable business seems
 
 142 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 only too glad to have his family name and personality 
 trumpeted up and down the land. The confusion of 
 thought between fame and notoriety leads the toilet- 
 powder man to have his picture pasted on the cover of 
 the box, and the beer and whiskey venders to have 
 their names blown in the bottle. If the business is 
 particularly disreputable, it calls for a still wider ad- 
 vertising on fences and buildings, with more and larger 
 portraiture attached. Half of the huge signs advertise 
 businesses that no self-respecting man would lend his 
 name to. And, of course, almost every one of them 
 lies about the goods. The boxed preparations are not 
 "brain food," or even good stomach food; the baking 
 powders are not "pure"; the cheap furniture and 
 clothing are not "the best"; the patent medicines are 
 not "harmless," neither are they "a sure cure." Fifty 
 per cent, of these advertisers are just ordinary swindlers 
 obtaining money under false pretences. But they must 
 have the money. What they will do with it when there 
 is a million or more they hardly know, but they think 
 they can be happy with it, or at least command respect 
 by its possession. So, indeed, they might if the label 
 of their disreputable business did not stick to them. 
 The devil could have worn a saint's robe unsuspected 
 if it were not for that cloven hoof. 
 
 Those who publish the infamous newspapers, who 
 keep the gambling houses and saloons, who sell the 
 races or their vote or political offices, are practically on 
 the same rung of the ladder. Nor are the gamblers in
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 143 
 
 Wall Street much higher up or better. They are after 
 money, and though they may differ from the ordinary 
 gambler, yet the difference is devoid of any great dis- 
 tinction. Obtaining something for nothing is a desire 
 held in common by all the get-rich-quick contingent. 
 Even the pick-pocket and the thief are not without it. 
 Indeed, the burglar's lust for wealth has grown so 
 abnormal in the last few years that the Burglary In- 
 surance companies have recently served notice upon 
 their clients that they must have higher premiums or 
 go out of business. Fifteen millions were the reported 
 house stealings of last year in New York City alone. 
 
 The dive-keeper, the pick-pocket and the thief are, 
 however, somewhat limited in their demands. They 
 want money for personal use, and have no ambition 
 except to live without work; but the promoter who 
 "waters" stock, the speculator who "corners" wheat, 
 cotton, or corn, the monopolist who exacts exorbitant 
 prices because he controls the situation, whatever it 
 may be, want money for personal power. They wish 
 to control, to dictate to others about commercial 
 and financial undertakings, to be called "the Cotton 
 King" or "the Copper King," to be feared by com- 
 petitors, to be consulted by politicians and cajoled by 
 fellow-directors, to be pointed out on the street and 
 whispered over as they enter a room, to have their 
 houses and horses and dinners talked about in the 
 papers. This is as near the hero or the king as a free 
 people will tolerate. It is as much power as the citizen
 
 \ 
 
 144 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 in private life is likely to attain. For it the promoter, 
 the stock manipulator, the business man do not hesitate 
 at doing unworthy and even illegal things. They dis- 
 criminate through protective tariffs against their own 
 people by selling their wares cheaper in Europe and 
 Asia than in America, they arrange for secret rebates 
 and concessions, they give out false values in im- 
 portations, receive improper commissions and percent- 
 ages, work poor materials into manufacture, form il- 
 legal combinations for higher prices. Not all of them, 
 to be sure by no means all yet many come to great 
 wealth by just such means. 
 
 But whatever the aim in attaining money, or the use 
 to which it is put, all classes seem to desire it. Big 
 and little, good and bad, rich man, poor man, beggar 
 man, thief, are all after it. They are willing enough, 
 it appears, to sacrifice health, friends, principles, an 
 honest name, and even common decency to get it. 
 Perhaps in the latter half of their lives, with nothing 
 remaining to them but money, they begin to realize 
 that the sacrifice has been too great. In gaining mil- 
 lions they have lost many things. While working over- 
 time in heaping up a surplus, the glory of the world, 
 the beauty of life, the pleasure of content have gone by 
 on the other side unknown and unnoticed. And alas I 
 they have developed but one side of their nature, and 
 that perhaps not the most desirable side. 
 
 Despite the materialistic philosophy of the day, man 
 is something more than an animal. He has within
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 145 
 
 him mental and moral natures as capable of develop- 
 ment as is his physical nature. The properly educated 
 man develops all three of these in such a degree that no 
 one exceeds, but each blends harmoniously with the 
 others to make the full-rounded, complete type. If 
 only one of these natures is cultivated, the man is as 
 badly off as though he had cultivated only one of his 
 senses. He suffers from under-development in certain 
 features, and from over-development in other features. 
 The abnormal vision in the giant's left eye was just 
 as bad as the subnormal vision in his right eye. He J 
 could not see truly with either. 
 
 It is a contention of these chapters that we Ameri- 
 cans are not developing all our natures proportion- 
 ately, that we are sacrificing the higher to the lower, 
 and exalting the material at the expense of the mental 
 and the moral. And with none of them do we ap- 
 proach the normal. Even the physical man is over- 
 trained, overworked, and overfed. As a result, his 
 heart is weak, his stomach capricious, his nerves strung 
 to the breaking point. He slaves for luxuries, and then 
 suffers from over-indulgence in them. With much 
 money he acquires appetites and wants; and the 
 present-day economist tells him that wants are the in- 
 centive to exertion, and that humanity develops prop- 
 erly only under such stress. Every day there is renewed 
 strain for more money, and a further gratification of 
 new appetites, which, like morphine or liquor, leave 
 the patient worse off than before. With all our wealth,
 
 146 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 and the bulk of it devoted to our physical and material 
 nature, we have not that side of us normally or prop- 
 erly developed. It is doubtful if we have ever enjoyed 
 our over-indulgence. Intemperance is its own Nemesis. 
 
 But what about our mental nature ? With our hun- 
 dreds of colleges and thousands of schools, what is our 
 intellectual attainment ? We are said to be quick and 
 "clever," with an answer for everything; but in the 
 last twenty years of our enormous money-making, what 
 intellectual thing of world-importance have we done? 
 Another Sydney Smith might ask us: What poets or 
 philosophers or essayists or critics have you produced ? 
 What novels or sculpture or pictures or music of yours 
 have convulsed the world ? What new principles have 
 your physicians and surgeons discovered, or your law- 
 yers and preachers established ? Who are your leaders 
 in pure science, in pure politics, in history, theology, 
 ethics ? 
 
 To this we might make answer with a list of dis- 
 tinguished names known here, if not in every case 
 elsewhere. Such studies and callings are pursued in 
 America, and there are excellent students in the dif- 
 ferent branches; but how much better and greater 
 they might have been had there been any popular en- 
 couragement or even demand for their work! They 
 have fought against the overpowering materialism of 
 the land, like a swimmer against the tide, until, finally 
 worn out, many of them drift with it, and eventually 
 will be engulfed by it. The wonder is perhaps not that
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR MONEY 147 
 
 they have done so little, but that in such an environment 
 they could do anything at all. The present surroundings 
 are not well fitted for them. But if our supposititious 
 Sydney Smith should ask who are our great men in 
 mechanics, commerce, transportation, manufactures, 
 finance, we should have no trouble in reciting dozens 
 of names, well known in every country of the globe. 
 Our captains of industry, our money-making inventors, 
 our practical scientists need no introduction either at 
 home or abroad. It is our great achievement, for 
 which Europe and Asia give us due credit, that we 
 lead the world in all money-making devices. We have 
 no difficulty in holding our own with anything that min- 
 isters directly or indirectly to material wants. 
 
 And what about that moral phase of us which seems 
 at times to be suffering eclipse? Oh, to be sure, we 
 have our hundreds of thousands who observe the Ten 
 Commandments, go to church every Sunday, and do 
 not cheat their neighbors on week days, just as we have 
 our tens of thousands who read good books and do some 
 high thinking outside of their business or profession; 
 but is not their morality, like their religion, a matter of 
 tradition, and their intellectuality an inherited habit? 
 Are we, in any large sense, a nation just now devoted 
 to teaching and cultivating either the moral, the spirit- 
 ual, or the intellectual ? It is useless to cite individual 
 instances regarding so abstract a contention. A thou- 
 sand cases of moral development on one side might be 
 met by a thousand cases of immoral development on
 
 148 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 the other side. And, after all, legally, the character of 
 a man (or of a people) is established by his general 
 reputation among his fellow-men. It seems very cer- 
 tain that our reputation morally and intellectually is 
 not so widely established as our reputation materially 
 and commercially. We are over-developed as mer- 
 chants, traders, carriers, manufacturers; and though 
 we are not by any means devoid of the moral or the 
 intellectual, yet these things are in abeyance, are kept 
 subservient to the physical. 
 
 Just now the gratification of the senses seems upper- 
 most, and this is reflected in our present civilization. 
 Ours is a material growth, and, like most things ma- 
 terial, it will not last forever. We shall perhaps rise 
 out of it because, sooner or later, we shall come to 
 realize that the indulgence of wants does not satisfy, 
 that a few things are better than many, that money can- 
 not buy happiness, and that the mind and the heart are 
 more abiding sources of pleasure than the stomach. 
 
 Even now, perhaps, a change is coming, for with all 
 our wealth there is discontent. It is among all classes 
 the day laborer, the mechanic, the salaried man, the 
 manager, the mill-owner even the millionaire knows 
 it. Indeed, the discontent of the poor is not so appall- 
 ing as that of the rich. With apparently every wish 
 gratified they are still unhappy. 
 
 Somewhere out of half-forgotten history comes the 
 story of the luxurious king, Abu-Abdallah, tossing un- 
 easily upon a splendid couch, and groaning in spirit as
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOU MONEY 149 
 
 his Vizier asked him what thing he could bring to give 
 
 him pleasure. 
 
 "Oh, Vizier! I am cursed for a want!" exclaimed 
 the unhappy one. 
 
 And the story continues that the perplexed Vizier 
 wrung his hands in despair as he gave back answer: 
 "By the beard of the Prophet, O King, thy case is 
 a hard one!"
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 DISCONTENT 
 
 IT is proper to say, apropos of our last chapter, that 
 those who seek wealth for the power it will give them do 
 not form the great majority. In fact, there are very few 
 who start out with that ambition, though quite a number 
 acquire the liking for control or command after they 
 get started. Nor are there many who pursue wealth 
 just for wealth's sake. Some continue at money-mak- 
 ing into old age, but it is because they are fond of the 
 excitement of it, or the business itself, or their partners 
 and associates, or because they have been in harness so 
 long that they would feel ill at ease out of it. These are, 
 however, but a handful to the millions of money-makers 
 who are after pleasure rather than power. The average 
 young man in trade or commerce or mining or agri- 
 culture, in the country store, the city bank, the railway 
 office, or the machine shop, cares little about the political 
 or commercial lever that money will put in his hands. 
 He wishes to gain wealth so that he need no longer 
 work, that he may "take it easy," and "have a good 
 time." 
 
 This is the common ambition, and also the common 
 150
 
 DISCONTENT 151 
 
 disappointment. For to be able to get on without work 
 is not a blessing, but a misfortune. It is the dream of 
 certain Utopian economists and, naturally enough, the 
 prayer of those who are overworked; but human ex- 
 perience is on record against general idleness in too 
 positive a manner for contravention. One need instance 
 just two classes in present-day society to suggest the 
 misery of "no work" the idle rich and the idle poor. 
 It is a question which is the more miserable, but there 
 is no question that both are unhappy. Even the con- 
 victs in prison beg to be given labor, something to do. 
 As for "having a good time" which usually means 
 the indulgence of the appetites that is a still com- 
 moner disappointment. There is always a next morn- 
 ing when the piper has to be paid in more ways than 
 are dreamt of in a social science. Over-eating and 
 excessive drinking eventually put one on a milk diet, too 
 much society wrecks the nerves, too much excitement 
 leads up to heart disease or apoplexy. Other desires 
 soon become dulled by gratification. A new game or a 
 new plaything is all the rage this year, but next year it 
 will have passed on. Dances and theatres are on a 
 footing in this respect with bicycles, horses, autos, 
 yachts. To be able to have them is soon not to want 
 them. At the opera the people in the gallery look 
 down at those in the boxes, and think what "a lovely 
 time" the box occupants are having. But no! Half 
 the people in the boxes are bored almost to extinction. 
 They are there more because it is the correct thing to
 
 152 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 do rather than because they are lovers of music. They 
 are not really enjoying it. Just so with those who 
 occupy palatial houses, entertain grandly, and are duly 
 reported, with portrait accompaniments, in the society 
 papers. They put forth a bold front about it, but in 
 reality the splendor soon becomes tawdry; they begin 
 to know the dreariness and emptiness of formality; 
 they are having what is called "a good time," yet they 
 remember having had much better ones when they were 
 younger, poorer, and less important socially. 
 
 But the rising generation will not believe this. It 
 can no more be taught by precept than its predecessor. 
 It must run its head against the stone wall to find out 
 that a wall is there. It is quite willing to risk splendid 
 misery. So each year sees new recruits. They hail 
 from everywhere or nowhere; they may belong in New 
 York or they may drift into the city from beyond the 
 Alleghanies. The Western man who has made a fort- 
 une, and comes East with his family to spend it, is 
 perhaps the more typical. With abundant means there 
 is no reason why he and his family should not adopt 
 that "higher standard of living" which writers of the 
 present day assure us is a nearer approach to perfect 
 existence. This means for them a larger house, more 
 varied food and drink, more magnificent raiment, and 
 more display. There goes with these, of course, all the 
 accompaniments of a grand establishment servants, 
 horses, dinners, balls, opera parties. For, naturally, 
 the breaking into society is a primary aim of the new-
 
 DISCONTENT 153 
 
 ly-arrived. The ambition to "better one's social posi- 
 tion " is a rampant American institution. Almost every 
 one is plagued with it. 
 
 Perhaps the parents are not so eager about the new 
 life as the children. They have rural tastes that pos- 
 sibly hark back to the church sociable or the Saturday 
 night gathering about the stove in the country store. 
 They may be dazzled momentarily by their splendid 
 estate, but sooner or later they realize that most of it is 
 gilded dust. Still, the wish to "give the children a 
 chance," to place them higher in the social scale than 
 they themselves attained, is uppermost; and they smile 
 and bear all sorts of snubs, indignities, and impositions 
 for the sake of the new generation. 
 
 If the parents have small capacity for the frivolous 
 entertainments of smart society, their children soon 
 prove to have little capacity for anything else. The 
 young man fails to graduate at college, the young 
 woman prefers "coming out" at eighteen to attending 
 school. Their newly-made friends in society console 
 them with corresponding experiences. Society is the 
 thing after all, and academic learning is merely a 
 musty tradition carried on by the "grinds." And 
 money is the only possession that really counts. In 
 order to come into the becoming notice of the exclusive 
 social leaders, there is heavy plunging in extravagances 
 costly dinners at fashionable restaurants in gondo- 
 las or on horseback, horse-show appearances in a welter 
 of ball dresses and jewels, yachting parties remarkable
 
 154 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 for the floating of everything in champagne, alms-giving 
 with that recklessness that ruins the receivers, and 
 church-giving with that prodigality that makes the 
 plain people of the congregation seem penurious. 
 
 The extravagances and display of the newly-arrived 
 get them into the social columns of the newspapers, 
 and finally land them within the sacred enclosure of 
 smart society. To be sure, they are winked and 
 laughed over, and behind their backs are ridiculed; 
 but society eats their dinners, drinks their wines, goes 
 to their big country places, and sometimes apologetic- 
 ally insists that they are "not half bad." In the mean- 
 tune the eternal round of teas, bridge, opera and 
 theatre parties goes on by winter; and autoing, yacht- 
 ing, riding, and polo by summer. The desire to do 
 ultra things increases because the moderate things soon 
 fail to excite or stimulate. There is over-dressing, 
 over-eating, over-entertaining, the cultivation of smarter 
 companions, more risque conversation, more bizarre 
 conduct. Finally, all the sugar having been eaten off 
 the cake, there is the beginning of satiety. The meeting 
 of the same people and the enduring of the same talk 
 about the same subjects come to be a nuisance. There 
 is a growing tyranny of things, and 
 
 " The endless clatter of plate and knife, 
 * * the singular mess we agree to call life," 
 
 begins to shape itself in dull monotonous proportions. 
 To get rid of ennui, to stop the thoughts that frighten
 
 DISCONTENT 155 
 
 them when alone, there is a still further plunge into 
 dissipation. The young woman goes out much, sleeps 
 little, gambles largely, perhaps smokes inordinately; 
 while the young man drowns carking care in multi- 
 tudinous club cocktails. Presently there is a physical 
 break-down, with neurasthenia as the nominal trouble; 
 or a social scandal to make food for the newspapers, 
 such as the young lady's running off with the chauffeur 
 in lieu of the coachman, or the young gentleman's 
 putting a bullet through his head from sheer world- 
 weariness. 
 
 It is such lives as these that look upon the surface 
 to be all sunshine. When they end abruptly in gloom, 
 with divorce, suicide, or some equally desperate plunge 
 to get out of the mesh, people stare open-eyed and 
 cannot understand why So-and-So, "with everything to 
 live for," should do such a thing. But many there are 
 who go this way, and others there be of duller, less 
 hysterical natures, with "hearts as dry as summer's 
 dust," that wearily live on into old age, burning to the 
 socket at some club window or in some opera box. 
 
 But it would be a misapprehension to suppose that 
 all the wealthy go through this miserable experience. 
 It is only a part of the smart, flashy element, so much 
 admired, that is thus in evidence considerable in 
 numbers in every town in the country, to be sure, but 
 still in the minority. Most of the millionaires are 
 shrewd, sensible people, or they would not be mil- 
 lionaires; and they know that money will not buy every-
 
 156 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 thing. They use it perhaps seriously and sensibly in 
 the cultivation of tastes for art, music, books, travel; 
 they take an interest in politics, in municipal improve- 
 ments, sociological problems, educational matters; or 
 perhaps they continue in business and help along the 
 proper development of the country. In any event, 
 their personal expenditure is small. They do not live 
 extravagantly, they have few of "the good times" so 
 coveted by the would-bes; and as for dissipation, it is 
 not a word in their vocabulary. The very rich, like 
 the Rockefellers and the Carnegies, are remarkable for 
 their abstemiousness, the simplicity of their lives, in 
 spite of "castles" and country houses made supra- 
 magnificent by the imagination of newspaper reporters. 
 But even with the sensible use of money there is, 
 with the wealthy themselves, the realization that it is 
 not the source of abiding happiness. The real joys of 
 life are in simple things home, family, friends, books, 
 nature, none of them an expensive or unattainable taste. 
 The millionaire is never so happy as when he has closed 
 his Fifth Avenue "palace," and is away in the woods 
 fishing, living out of a frying-pan, and sleeping in a 
 lean-to under the pines with his coat for a pillow. It 
 is a satisfaction to throw off cares and worries, to fling 
 the world behind one, to be free, to be let alone. The 
 very power of wealth turns out finally to be something 
 of a nuisance, something of a disappointment, some- 
 thing which is no longer desirable. Like the blue- 
 winged butterfly of Cashmere,
 
 DISCONTENT 157 
 
 "The lovely toy so fiercely sought 
 Hath lost its charm by being caught." 
 
 Possession kills desire. To have a thing is no longer 
 to want it. Prince Bismarck at the height of his power 
 made the statement that his greatest pleasure was to 
 be up in the mountains, wearing greased boots, and 
 alone with his dogs. There have been other heads 
 that have rested uneasily under the weight of the crown. 
 Many kings in history have gladly abdicated; and in 
 our own day we have seen our richest men giving away 
 their hundreds of millions. Evidently happiness is not 
 synonymous with a bank account, is not the outcome 
 of power, and has little to do with luxuries. 
 
 But again, those who are without wealth will not 
 believe this. They cannot understand why a man 
 with plenty of money should be dissatisfied; and that 
 such a person should commit suicide through sheer 
 boredom is proof -positive of inherited insanity. Give 
 them the chance and the money, and never doubt but 
 that they would be happy! The supersensitive who 
 shoot themselves do not know how to have "a good 
 time" ! Let the "outs" get in, and they will set a pat- 
 tern for future millionaires ! It is an old story. Every 
 worm in the bait box wants a change, wants to "im- 
 prove his condition in life" by getting somewhere eke. 
 Not that the uneasy "outs" suffer for the necessaries 
 of existence, with no place to sleep and little to eat; 
 not that they are lame, blind, halt, or have other mis-
 
 158 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 fortunes; but they are unhappy because others have 
 more than they, and indulge in a "higher standard of 
 living." Discontent is with the rich man because of 
 having too much, and with the poor man because he 
 has too little. Is there any happy man in between ? 
 
 It is a somewhat hackneyed saying that those who 
 have neither poverty nor riches the middle class in 
 the community are the happiest people of all. That 
 may be generally true; but specifically, what about the 
 mechanic class of to-day as represented by our labor 
 unionists? They are certainly neither rich nor poor, 
 but have about as much discontent under their hats 
 as any class of people to be found between Maine 
 and California. Their wages have been steadily in- 
 creasing for ten years until now they appear very large, 
 but their discontent has increased in corresponding 
 proportions. They have more to-day than yesterday, 
 but still not enough. They are dissatisfied with their 
 income, their work, their employer, their government 
 their whole condition and position in life. Why? 
 What part has the spirit of envy in this discontent ? 
 
 The question is one that cannot be answered by 
 statistics, nor argued arbitrarily from experience; and 
 yet everyone knows that envy is a more common breeder 
 of unhappiness than want. We are all of us perhaps 
 disposed to think that some one else is getting more hap- 
 piness out of life than we are; and every man, sooner 
 or later, thinks his own career a mistake, and wishes 
 he could change places with his neighbor. Experience,
 
 DISCONTENT 159 
 
 however, has failed to prove the increased happiness 
 of the change. As for Labor, the more it gets the 
 more it wants. In that respect it is not different from 
 Capital. It is continually quarrelling about the dollar, 
 and apparently not interested in anything but the 
 dollar. No wonder it is discontented. 
 
 But the saying about the middle class in the com- 
 munity being the happiest, refers perhaps more strictly 
 to the professional classes than to the labor class to 
 the teachers, preachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, 
 managers, and others who live on a stipend. True 
 enough, this class is about the most contented of all. 
 It does not get much money, and between the exactions 
 of Capital and Labor it has hard enough work to make 
 a living and educate its children; but for thirty years 
 it has upheld a tariff that oppressed them, hoping 
 thereby to benefit a manufacturing class that ignored 
 them and a laboring class that despised them, and has 
 uttered little or no complaint. To-day it is compara- 
 tively worse off as regards money than any other class, 
 having had little or no increase of wage from the recent 
 prosperity of the country; but amid the almost universal 
 clamor of the envious and discontented it has held its 
 tongue about its poverty, and gone its way in peace. 
 
 It has not held its tongue, however, about the 
 wrangling and quarrelling of Capital and Labor, the 
 lawlessness and recklessness of rich and poor alike, the 
 slashing to pieces of the country, and the mental and 
 moral downslip of the nation. Nor will it cease to talk
 
 160 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 about these things. The country belongs to the pro- 
 fessional classes as much as to the promoters and their 
 cohorts. And, in the end, it is the professional classes 
 who are held responsible for the well-being of the re- 
 public. It is the intelligence of a nation that ultimately 
 rules, not the business men who buy and sell, nor the 
 voters who are run into polling places like sheep, and 
 sold by the bosses at so much a head. The great 
 trouble with the professional classes is that they do not 
 talk enough. They should resolutely oppose the 
 present tendency toward turning the country into a 
 slot-machine, and the people of it into a mob of hys- 
 terical gamblers. With the fairest land in the world, 
 and the greatest opportunity a people has ever known, 
 we shall not escape condemnation if out of our civili- 
 zation comes naught but money. Humanity has the 
 right to expect better things of us. 
 
 But, it may be asked, why is it that the professional 
 classes are the most contented of any in the com- 
 munity ? They have small incomes, and are sometimes 
 worried by debts and obligations; but why is it that 
 they never "strike" or form combinations in restraint 
 of life, liberty, and property that they may get more 
 money ? Is it perhaps that money is not the great aim 
 and ideal of their lives ? The fact that they take up 
 with pursuits which are known to yield no great pecuniary 
 returns would suggest as much. They enter profes- 
 sions because they are interested in the work. For 
 love of the work they are willing to forego wealth. As
 
 DISCONTENT 161 
 
 a result, they are not gnawed by envy, nor eaten up 
 with discontent. Possibly they were of a contented 
 disposition originally or they would not have gone 
 into the professions. If so, it but helps us on to a 
 further conclusion, whither we have been tending for 
 some pages back, namely: Contentment is a subjective 
 quality and exists quite independent of possessions. It 
 is something in the disposition of the individual and 
 cannot be bought. Money has very little to do with it. 
 
 But the economist insists that content is not the proper 
 state of mind; that discontent stimulates to action, 
 leads up to great deeds, and is therefore preferable. In 
 the narrow meaning of contentment as that self-satis- 
 faction which allows one to rest upon his oars, there is 
 undoubtedly truth in the economist's insistence. But, 
 even so, why should all action gather about money, 
 and why should all deeds be of a barter-and-sale char- 
 acter? A little dissatisfaction over the emptiness of 
 the American head might produce as favorable results 
 as dissatisfaction over the supposed emptiness of the 
 American pocket-book. 
 
 And why may not one continue to work and still be 
 happy with his lot? Contentment does not argue a 
 condition without work, but a mind without worry. 
 With it one may still wish to "better his position in 
 life," but not necessarily by an accumulation of wealth. 
 To have that "good time," to be overfed and over- 
 dressed and over-indulged, to cut a figure in rapid, 
 foolish society is not to "better" one's position. Such
 
 162 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 things are designed to entertain, to amuse, to furnish 
 some sort of physical pleasure; but the mental and the 
 moral natures require as much attention as the physical 
 if the greatest betterment is to be reached. Money is 
 perhaps capable of helping all three, but, unfortunately, 
 the use to which it is put makes it more often harm- 
 ful to all three. True enough, it unlocks many doors, 
 and some that might better never have been opened, 
 but it never yet opened the door of human happiness. 
 Those who expect to get money first, and ask the 
 Happy Fairy to come live with them afterward, will be 
 disappointed of their guest. She will not come.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 THIS is the portion of a book wherein the reader 
 usually expects to find a list of remedies for our ills, a 
 catalogue of laws recommended, or, at least, a bit of 
 good advice in parting. And this is the time when he 
 will perhaps be agreeably disappointed. I have no 
 faith to believe that we shall change our conditions by 
 legislation; nor have I any theory wherewith we may 
 produce a national happiness or plan whereby we may 
 reform the nature of man. This is not a book of con- 
 structive criticism. I shall be satisfied if I have pointed 
 out where we lack, where we ail, and more than satis- 
 fied if that will make people think. We require no 
 precipitate action, but rather a sober realization of our 
 present condition. 
 
 Unfortunately, precipitate action in advance of think- 
 ing is our usual method of procedure. If anything 
 goes wrong with the individual or the city or the state, 
 if the unexpected happens in business, or the unfore- 
 seen comes to pass in politics, immediately there is the 
 clamor of press and public for legislation, for action, 
 for judgment. In hard times we cry out for a new 
 163
 
 164 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 tariff or a wider circulation of the currency; in good 
 times we insist upon federal statutes that may be used 
 to "bust" the trusts, and state statutes that shall bully 
 the railways. We do not inquire whose or what the 
 fault, nor wait to see if the fault will correct itself; we 
 demand a law that shall meet the requirement of the 
 moment. As a result, the statute books are burdened 
 with hundreds of laws originally designed to meet 
 special needs, but now (the needs having passed) are 
 as dead as the code of Draco. 
 
 In this making of laws, be it understood that every 
 individual who finds himself clothed with a little brief 
 authority as a legislator, takes himself seriously as an 
 expert. That is why he has such a profound contempt 
 for other people's opinions. The newly-elected senator 
 from Kansas, who has spent his days on a farm, no 
 sooner arrives in Washington than he develops a very 
 superior knowledge of constitutional law; the governors 
 of southern states, who have been on the wrong side 
 of every financial fence since the Civil War, dictate a 
 rate schedule to interstate railways; and defeated 
 Presidential candidates, who have never had any large 
 experience in money matters, pop up with schemes for 
 checking the hoarding of money in times of panic by 
 having the general government guarantee the deposits 
 in all the national banks. Ridiculous as such assump- 
 tions may appear on their face, the law-making part of 
 them becomes a reality too often for laughter. But the 
 laws do not command respect, every one ignores them
 
 CONCLUSION 165 
 
 if he can, and our contempt for authority is increased 
 thereby. 
 
 The reputation we have achieved as the most lawless 
 people on the face of the earth is perhaps too well 
 established to be refuted. The cause of it is not far 
 to seek. We have too many foolish laws for any intel- 
 ligent people to live up to. The great evil of most of 
 them is that they are designed to help or harm certain 
 individuals, corporate bodies, classes, or communities. 
 They are special, not general laws. If laws have any 
 meaning whatever, it is to enforce uniform conditions 
 for all alike, and not to supply opportunities or estab- 
 lish hindrances to the few. Every one should be placed 
 upon an equal footing and then allowed to work out 
 his own salvation. That is the essence of individual 
 liberty, and so long as individualism and not paternal- 
 ism is the policy of our government, there should be no 
 pro or con discriminations by special statutes. Every 
 one understands that individual action must not con- 
 flict with general interests, and that at times it may be 
 necessary to curb the specially bumptious; but among 
 the sober-minded there is a feeling that there are too 
 many petty enactments, too many unnecessary restric- 
 tions. They would have many of them repealed and 
 the remaining general laws more rigorously enforced. 
 
 Of course, almost every one in the community has 
 remedial legislation in mind for what are esteemed un- 
 bearable grievances. There are those who would re- 
 peal the Protective Tariff and Contract-Labor laws,
 
 166 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 who would insist upon the incorporation of Labor, the 
 enforcement of the Eight-Hour day, the restriction of 
 the voting franchise, the stopping of immigration, the 
 abolition of the tenement-house conditions. There are 
 others who would be delighted with laws to control 
 corporations, to regulate railways, to abolish the writ 
 of injunction, to stop federal interference in state 
 affairs and labor matters, to expand the currency, to 
 tax legacies and incomes, to limit fortunes, to investigate 
 millionaires; in short, to exploit almost any one's iniqui- 
 ty, save their own. Possibly some of these recommenda- 
 tions might be of value in adjusting the yoke and dis- 
 tributing the load more evenly, but they would not be 
 reliefs from the burden. Nor would they be recipes 
 for happiness in the home, peace in the town, and up- 
 rightness in the nation. We cannot by rushing a bill 
 through Congress resolve ourselves into either a pros- 
 perous or a contented people. Wealth and happiness 
 at such a price would be too easy of attainment. The 
 welfare of a nation rests not in its legislative halls, but 
 in the moral sense of its people. History in the past 
 has proved this again and again. All the laws of Rome 
 the greatest law-maker among the nations could not 
 save her from destruction when once her morality 
 began to fail. One wonders at times if the somewhat 
 desperate and frequent recourse to legislation in America 
 is not indicative of where our own moral sense is slip- 
 ping away. 
 As with the nation so with the individual. His
 
 CONCLUSION 167 
 
 salvation lies within himself. Intoning the virtues in 
 his ear or flinging moral precepts at his head will not 
 help him. Nor will deterrent laws have any more 
 than a negative effect upon him. We may legislate to 
 stamp out vice, but what law can be created that shall 
 bring in virtue? We may enact "In God We Trust" 
 upon our coinage, but how shall we make the individual 
 trust in God? He must learn out of his own ex- 
 perience that the mental and the moral are as 
 necessary to his well-being as the material and the 
 physical. 
 
 Again, he must learn over again a forgotten lesson 
 of the ages that virtue is its own reward, even in the 
 worst of tunes. At present he perhaps has some doubts 
 about it. He too often, for instance, despises work and 
 endures it only for the sake of its money equivalent; 
 he cannot be made to believe in the gospel of work for 
 the work's sake; and he does not comprehend the real 
 happiness that comes with love the love of family, 
 friends, books, nature, art. Just now he is too much 
 absorbed in money-getting for married life or friend- 
 ships; he cares little or nothing about reading or 
 music, and as for nature the most abiding of all 
 loves he has perhaps spent his business energy in 
 disfiguring her, and has now fled to the city where he 
 shall not see her. 
 
 There are plenty of other things of good report, of 
 interest, of charm, that men in the past have thought 
 lovable and pleasure-giving things, for instance, of
 
 168 THE MONEY GOD 
 
 intellectual pith in discovery, in science, in philosophy, 
 in political creed, even in religious faiths and beliefs 
 but there is small reason to think that the average 
 American of to-day cares for them. He has no time. 
 When his ship comes in with its cargo of specie he will 
 cultivate the graces and amenities of life, and do what 
 he can for art, literature, and the public welfare. But, 
 alas, poor soul! he too often dies in the harness, with 
 all his wealth upon him, and the pale vision of a desired 
 higher life unrealized. Will his children profit by his 
 example? Will there be a mental and a moral uplift 
 with the generations to come ? Shall we finally under- 
 stand that the pursuit of wealth does not lead to con- 
 tentment, and that we must establish loftier ideals of 
 life? 
 
 The face of the shield just now shows dark, and it 
 is this darker side that has been persistently held up to 
 view throughout these chapters, with the thought that it 
 would make people realize the clouds that lower upon 
 us; but it would be idle to deny, even were one so dis- 
 posed, that the shield has another and a brighter re- 
 flection. Let us not doubt that there is still happiness 
 in this land of ours, notwithstanding the hurly-burly of 
 these commercial days; that there are still men of 
 honesty, decency and righteousness among us; and 
 that no matter how sordid the motives nor how vain 
 the pursuits nor how threatening the outlook, we are 
 by no means to be despaired of. It cannot be that we 
 shall come to naught. The very energy of the Western
 
 CONCLUSION 169 
 
 sun in us should save us from destruction. The ideals 
 of the fathers, their ambition for the nation, their 
 prayers that ours should be a noble life and ours an 
 influence for good among the races of men, are still 
 alive. Deep down below the money line in the Amer- 
 ican bosom the heart is sound; and it is not an un- 
 reasonable hope that when this money madness has 
 spent its fury we shall return to the American tradi- 
 tions, to the law of right dealing with our neighbor, 
 and to the gospel of love and faith. Then, perhaps, we 
 shall be prosperous with that sum of prosperity that 
 lies in character rather than in wealth or girth, and 
 successful with that measure of success that lies in 
 public sentiment rather than in restraining laws. In 
 the meantime, while the worship of the Money God 
 continues, perhaps we shall talk in vain, but let us 
 not cease to talk. Whatever our defeat, we should 
 continue to fight.
 
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