Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-11-30
MIsERs AND MANIPULAToRs.

A very remarkable case has recently come
to light in Chicago, of man who has Just
been committed to Jail as a vagrant and pro-
fessional mendicant and is worth three
quarters of million dollars. The man has
been known as a professional beggar for
years, living in rags and on scraps and
crusts, while heaping up wealth In land,
stocks and bonds, which amounts to liberal
fortune.
The picture which is thus authenticated OF
human greed is striking one and can be
appreciated by the vast mass of mankind.
That anyone who is possessed of wealth, the
income of which would enable him to live
in a way surprising his widest dreams of
luxury, should pre- er to continue his miser-
able way of life, and to importune the pub
lie for aims, will be recognized by everyone
as a startling exhibition of the greed which
sinks every consideration alike of honor,
decency, or even individual pleasure. in the
sole object of amassing useless riches 1t is
probable that if the case of the Chicago
miser were philosophically investigated, it
would be found that he pursues his miser-
able occupation because he has become so
accustomed to it that he could not be happy
in any other circumstances, and that his
greed for greater wealth, to be attained by
the method of begging. is more a habit of
mind than anything else.
The recognition of the mental habit which
can perceive nothing TO be gained in life
except the constant augmentation of already
excessive riches, brings in the fact that there
are other and even more injurious examples
though not SO easily recognized by the
majority of people-of the same evil in the
persons of some of the powers Of the fnan-
cial world. Every one can see in the man
who prefers to wear rags and wheedle people
out of small sums on the streets rather than
enjoy the comforts of large fortune, a sur
prisiDg and unnaturrl exhibition of greed.
But if We dIvest ourselves of prejudice, we
may see in the men who with far greater
fortunes devote themselves to the work of
swelling their riches by methods of more
positive chicanery and fraud, an exhi-
bition of the same vice in more aggravated
and injurious form.
At the worst wealthy beggar is little
more than nuisance and petty fraud. He
swindles no one out of any such amount as
can seriously injure his victim, and his ex-
ample is not likely to attract many imi-
tators. But the millionaire ten or twenty
times as wealthy, who by juggling with the
money and stock markets, succeeds in
acquiring the corporate property of
others at half its true value. or by
stock-watering and false dividends
palms off securities at double their honest
worth, or by means of combinations, or cor
porate favoritism, swells his millions at the
cost of the masses, obtains the money of 9th
ers in large amounts by more discreditable
methods, and holds up the example of sue
cessful chicanery to demoralize business
generally. Between this Chicago miser and
the men who rule the financial world by
wealth which is the concrete result of viola
tions alike of statute enactments and natural
law, the worshiper of Mammon in rags is
the less injurious, and those in broadcloth
are the most startling examples of consum-
ing greed for the increase of wealth already
beyond the dreams of avarice.
Of course, in the one case as in the other,
| tnls phenomenon Can pe eAplalneu ny Lie
mental habit which has devoted itself ex-
clusively to the acquisition of wealth so
long that it can only abandon that pursuit
with death. But since the law very prop
erly interferes with the three-quarters mil
lionaire who tries to enhance his wealth by
| the fraudulent assumption of poverty, is it
not also its province to try to place some
check on the fifty or hundred times million
aires who undertake to swell their eggregious
riches by more wholesale and more injur-
| ious methods of chicanery?