The Progress., 1892-12-31


shall do now may be different things.
| We are not necessarily bound to do to-
day what they did then, because we
may live under conditions that may sb-
solutely change the bearing of the specific
act itself, as far as distribution of prop
erty is concerned. But what we are
sOlicitous about is the principle chat un-
derlies the act. There are two princi-
Piles that underlie this early community
that are general and capable of unlimit-
| ed application through all ages and
times.
WEALTH is A TRUST.
First-The principle that the owner
ship of all property held by man who
processes to belong to Christian ciriliza-
ton is not i'll its nature absolute, but in
the nature of a trust. The man who
says, II am outside the pale of the Chris
tan world" belongs to the savage world
and has no part in Christianity.
Second-That every worthy person
ought to have a subsistence before any
body has any more.
do not mean to say that every dead
beat or bum is to live by the process of
being a deadbeat. | have learned
great deal on that subject since / have
come to New York, and have modified
my ideas by coming in contact with
scores and scores of men who are abso-
lutely worthless. Men who will not
work are bent on beating somebody else
out of living. 1t is true of men who
wear rags and equally true of men who
sometimes wear fine clothes. | speak of
the class which is thus represented. But
listen. If the text which have read III
your hearing this morning be true, it is
fact that no Christian can gainsay.
No man has right to do as he pleGSeS
tcith that ,cItich he mag legally possess.
| stand before the will legally exc
cuted of that millionaire, and in the
name of Almighty God and Jesus Christ.
before the highest court of the eterni
ties, challenge that will on its probate
No man vino lives within the pale of
Christianity, no man who breathes the
air of a Christian home, and on whose
shoulders fall the mantle of a Christian
legacy, has right TO contravene in the
process of life the foundational prin-
ciples on which Christianity rests in its
last analysis.
First-To the validity of all rights the
recognition of the community is essen |
tial. Personality is an element of right |
In society we do not have the ideal man. |
We have great deal of nonsense in our
political economy about some vague |
somebody who has certain inalienable |
rights. This ghost of a man, this man |
cut out of stone and wood, this ideal |
man apart from society is a fiction IN
the imagination of certain romantic |
economists. There is no ideal man out
side of the |, the thou, in society as in
dividuals. have no separate existence
from society. All my rights as a man
are derived not because | belong to an
ideal called a man, but because | am
part and parcel of great community
that throbs with great heart. If that
be true, my personal, individual rights
must be subordinate to the rights of the
whole, from which my rights are de-
rived, for part cannot be superior to
the whole.
LABOR THE CREATOR OF WEALTH.
Wealth really represents what? 1t
really represents the hard labor of the
1t never creates itself; it
is created by man. You buy piece of
land in an unimproved portion of the
city, and it becomes rich by the accumu-
lated labor of ages piling up until the
life of the community has intensified il
and the "unearned increment" makes it
valuable. Every dollar of wealth on
this earth represents more even than
that which it symbolizes. If you have
a dollar in your pocket, it is worth a
dollar and twenty cents to make it. 1t
means that somebody's heart has been
broken in the loss of that twenty cents
which went to make up the currency
you use today. In every commercial
this throbbing heart of the
world that labors and produces must be
calculated.
Money in itself has no value. Mr..
iould's money in itself is not worth a
leather. If he had taken it all and put
t on vessel and been wrecked on an
sland, he would not have been worth a
,ent. But if somebody had picked him
Up as waif and brought him back to
New York and put him in Wall street,
lie would have been worth a hundred ;
the community had
Tiuen ii vdlue. From the community
,omes the intrinsic value of all wealth. !
md outside of it it has no value. {
Second-Man has no right to do what I
le pleases with what he may possess, be-
ause he has the right to do only what
le ought to do. A man may say: Il
'ossess my money. In the eyes of this t
.reat nation is it not miner" WELL" 6
ay, you possess it, but that does not I
nean that you are absolved from all
Moral right by that possession A man c
assesses my watch. but that does not a
make it his. may have lost it, and he t
lay have picked it up or walked into c
ny room in the dead of night and taken c
away. The fact he possessed it did i
OF make it his. Possession may be t
eyeral points in law. LIT it is not the u