The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-03-12

Ices UIdU ever EuVtereO IN lne Cuulcues OF
christendom will never save your soul un-
less your business character corresponds
with your religious profession. Some of
the worst scoundrels in America have been
members of churches, and they got fat on
sermons about heaven when they most
needed to have the pulpits preach that
which would bring them to repentance or
thunder them out of the holy communions,
where their presence was sacrllege ana an
infamy.
eWe must especially. deplore the mis-
fortune of banks in various parts of this
country in that they damage the banking
institution, which is the great convenience
of the centuries, and Indispensable to com
merce and the advance of nations. With
one hand it blesses the lender, aud with the
other it blesses the borrower. The bank
was born of the worlds necessities, and is
venerable with the marks of thousands of
years. Two hundred years before Christ
the bank of llium existed and paid its de-
positors ten per cent. The bank of Venice
was established in 117l, and was of such
high credit that its bills were at a premium
above coins, which were frequently clipped.
Bank of Genoa, founded in l345, Bank of
Barcelona, l40l; Bank of Amsterdam, 1909;
Bank of Hamburg founded 1919, its circu-
lation based on great silver bars kept in the
vaults; Bank Of England, sta ted by Will
aging the stupendous debt of
England; Bank of Scotland, founded
in 1895, Bank of Ireland 1888, / ank of
North America, planned by Robert Morris,
1771, without whose financial help all the
bravery of our grandfatherS would not
have achieved American Independence.
But now we have banks III all our cities and
towns, thousands and thousands. On their
shoulders are the interests of private indi-
xvidualS and COMBINATIONS In than
are the great arteries through which run
the currents of the nations life They have
been the resources of the thousands of
financiers in days of business exigencY.
They stand for accommodation, for facility
for individual, State and national relief
AT their head and in their management
there is as much interest and moral worth
as in any class of men--perhaps more. How
nefarious, then, the behavior of those who
bring disrepute upon this venerable, benig
nant and God -honored institution.
We also deploro abuse of trust funds,
because they fly in the face of that
divine goodness which seems determined to
bless this land. We are having the eighth
year of unexampled national harvest. The
wheat gamblers get hold of the wheat, and
the corn gamblers get hold of the corn The
full tide of Gods mercy towards this land is
put back by those great dykes Of dishonest
resistance. When God provides enough
food and clothing to feed and apparel this
whole nation like princes the scrabble of
dishonest men to get more than their share,
and get it all hazards, keeps everything
shaking with uncertainty and everybody
asking: "What nextP' Every week makes
new revelations. How many more bank
presidents and bank cashiers have
been specializing with other peo-
| pies money, and how many
moro bank directors are in i'm
beetle silence letting the perfidy go on,
the great and patient God only knows! My
| opinion is that we have got near the bot
tom The wind has been prlcked from the
great bubble Of American speculation The
men who thought that the Judgment day
was at least 5000 years off, found it in 1888,
1887, 1886; and this nation has been taught
that men must keep their hands out of other
peoples pockets Great businesses built on
borrowed capital have been obliterated and
men who had nothing have lost all they had.
believe we are started on higher career
of prosperity than this land has ever seen,
it, and if, and if.
If the first men, and especially Christian
men, will learn never to speculate upon bor-
rowed capital. If you have mind TO take
your own money and turn it all into kites.
to fly them over every commons in the
United States, you do society no wrong, ex-
cept when you tumble your helpless chill
dred into the poorhouse for the public to
take care of. But you have no right to
take the money Of others and turn it into
kites. There is one word that has deluded
more people into bankruptcy and State
prison and perdition than any other word
in commercial life, and that is the word
borrow; that one word is responsible for all
the defalcations, and embezzlements, and
financial consternations of the last twenty
years. When executors conclude to specu-
late with the funds of an estate committed
to their charge, they do not purloin, they
say they only borrow; when a banker makes
an overdraught upon his institution, he
does not commit a theft, he only borrows
When the officer of a company, by flaming
advertisement in some religious papers,
and gilt certificates of stock gets a multi
tude Of country people to put their small
earnings into an enterprise for carrying on
some undeveloped nothing, he does not
fraudulently take their money, he only
borrows. When young man with easy
access to his employers money drawer, or
the confidential clerk by close propinquity
to the account books, takes few dollars
for Wall street excursion, he expects to
put it back; he will put it all back; he will
put it all back very soon. He only borrows
What is needed is some man of gigantic
limb to take his place at the curbstOne in
front of Trinity church, and when that
word borrow comes bounding along, kick it
clean through to Wall street ferry boat
and if, striking on that, it bounds clear
over till it strikes Brooklyn heights or
Brooklyn hill, it will be well for the City
Of Churches.
Why, when you are going to do wrong,
pronounce so long a word as borrow, a
word of six letters, when you can get a
shorter word more descriptive of the reality,
a word Of only five letters, the word steal
There are times when we all borrow and
borrow legitimately, and borrow with the
divine blessing, for Christ in his Sermon on
the Mount enjoins "from him that would
borrow of thee turn not thou away" A
young man rightly borrows money 10 get
his education. Purchasing house and not
able to pay all down in cash, the purchaser
rightly DOrrows it on mortgage. Crises
come in business when it would be wrong
for man not 10 borrow. But
roll this warning through all
these aisles, over the backs
of all these pews, never borrow TO speculate; ;
not dollar, not a cent, not a farthing.
Young men, young men, / warn you by
your worldly prospects and the value OF
your immortal souls, do not do it. There
are breakers distinguished for their ship
wrecks-the Hanways, the Needles, the
Caskets, the Douvers, the Anderlos, the
Skerries-and many craft has gone 10
pieces ON those rocks; but have TO tell you
that all the Hanways, and the Needles, and
the Caskets, and the Skerries are as nothing