The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1876-04-30
The Pursuit of the Dollar.


pioriDg the admiration for rich men whict
is so common in America. To be rich IL
the crown of virtue. The self ade man lie
Biographical and engraved in rampant
journalism. The self made man always
turns out to be rich man. Aud he made
his own money; therefore he made bimself'
| His likeness is struck off by millions 10
the illustrated papers and sent by mail to
be worshipped by American youth, as
craven images. The rising generation is
expected to look with solemnest veneration,
if not with religious worship, on the coun-
| terfeit presentment of some pug nosed tai
low chandler whose virtaous bank account
is discussed in connection with his en-
craving. The same story, says our author,
is always told, of how he commenced with
one dollar and multiplied it successfully
perhaps knavishly, perhaps cruelty, but at
any rate successfully ;-nothing % said OF
his honor, his honesty, his charity, his pa
triotism, his maguanimity, his unselfish-
ness he is rich, that is all-except that he
made his money himself. This is the pic
ture.
The Galaxy man says that this is demon
izaling to the yonng thatit whets their Gag
erness for money, dwarfs their appreciation
of noble ends and sheds false halo of re-
spectability over the detestable vice of
avarice. We say 30 too. We believe with
the GALAXY that the man who has bent all
his energies and devoted all the affections
of his immortal soul to the acquisition of
dollars is a wretch whose deprsvity should
be held up to the inspection of Ingenious
youth, as an object, not of reverence, but of
detestation.
This worship of wealth, this spirit of
money getting, is the essentially American
vice, and to it our author traces the as
founding financial corruption prevailing in
this country. He says:
In political morality the comparison be-
tween ourselves and England and France is
not to our advantage. The development of
crime, exhibited by Congress and State fun
tionares during the last few years, would be
germ would have been eradicated long before
it reached the sturdy proportions which it has
attained with us, revealed in Congressional
Investigations.
But the thieving propensity isrby no
means confined to Office holders. The
GALAXY writer says that he lately sat in
church where he WAS surrounded by rich
gentlemen who had the habit OF going
through bankruptcy. Every time they had
performed that ceremony they had become
richer under the names of their wives,
until finally they really felt no shame in
their specially OF swindling. The GALAXY
thinks the parson/ ought to have reasoned
with them to the effect that their proper
place was the penitentiary instead of a
cushioned front pew in church, but he ne
elected to do it,
The writer continues:
The great moral question of its day was the
abolition of slavery, and now it is that of pre-
venting our people from becoming thieves
The public mind is so accustomed to theft
that if committed even by the highest func-
tionaries of the State, it does not produce a
sh ock corresponding to the proportions of the
crime. 1t is a dark cloud, reaching from the
Lakes to the Gulf and from ocean to ocean,
bliKhting in its shadow municipal State, and
Federal governments. No enlightened nation
in the world shows the corruption which in
tests almost every branch of the American
Government; its parallel can only be found in
the semi Nv liz alton of Mexico.
Riches have built up to Themselves in
America a caste, an aristocracy. The grand
passion, the ruling ambition, of American
society being money, the possessors of that
desideratum assume airs of superiority and
find a social supremacy easily conceded to
them by their humber co-votarics at the
shrine of Mammon. Mammon having thus
captured the domain of ar!stocratic dis
tinction, presents it to'his worshippers as
an additional guerdOn for activity In his
service, and thus strengthens his empire.
Americans love money for itself and they
love it for the social rank which it brings.
Ayarice is disgusting in itself, but when
it assumes aristocratic pretensions it be-
comes doubly so. Your self made man
looks with immense complacency on him
self and sets up his achievements as the
standard of fame and merit. If another
man has not gotten rich, that's enough
he ia nobody. He may have sundry
valuable requirements or native gifts il
he has not coined them into money he is