The herald., 1895-02-17

| duties, and, if not severe, punishments
are inflicted with reasonable degree of
| certainty.
The idea prevails extensively that the
highest and best achievement in life is to
acquire wealth. 1t has taken dangerous
hold upon the people of this country.
For century we have been in the midst
OF the most remarkable national
! development ever known in an
age or country, and more especially has
this been true since the discovery of gold
| in California. Our colonization and en-
terprises have been on the greatest scale,
and the largest number of men have made
! the most ponderous fortunes and in the
shortest times, ever recorded in the his
tory of mankind. Those who have ac-
quired fortunes are among the heroes of
society, and are more honored than those
who have rendered public service in war
or civic occupations, the publicist philos
opher, philanthropist or exemplar of true
Christianity. Young men take notice of
those who stand highest in public esteem,
and are apt to choose careers in which
they can emulate them. The millionaire,
and especially the mnlti- millionaire, is
pointed out as distinguished parsonage,
and people take off their hats to him, as
serfs do to lords, and little or no
distinction is made as to the manner his
million or millions were acquired, and some
have obtained their fortunes in ways as
criminal, morally, as the robbers of bank
or railroad train. The only difference
between wrecking a railroad and wrecking
a railroad train is that the latter endan-
gers life, but it does not contribute any
thing like as much toward impoverishing
others.
The influence of wealth worship is GER
tainly cause of deterioration in morals,
and loss of moral sentiment removes the
strongest restraint of crime. Beyond this
the sentiment exists that to take from
those who have acquired wrongfully is in
the nature of just retribution. The thief
will steal from the rich man with less hest
tation than from the poor man.
Nowhere in the world has materialism
held so. high a place as in the United
States, England possibly excepted. The
life of the nation for two generations has
been materialistic. The public have given
indifferent thought to anything else. Eth
les and esthetics have been kept in re-
tirement; had it been otherwise wealth
would not have been SO nearly the Amer
lean deity, nor would there have been
social classification based upon the posses
sion of the things of earth; men would
not have been put forward for high civic
places on account of their wealth, nor our
politics corrupted by the use of money.
Rigorous enforcement of laws for their
punishment will help to restrain crime,
but the idea that money getting is the
highest object in life must be displaced |
by that which puts moral and intellectual
attainments as the most honorable and |
best. There must be a letting go of ma
terialism and more attention given to |
ethics and esthetics.
The hard times experienced in the last |
few years produced idleness and certain
spirit OF desperation. Americans are
proud and when pushed to extreme want, |
repugnance to begging causes them to
contemplate gaining subsistence in some
other way; it saps the foundations of
their moral timents, and being
courageous they resort to crime. 1t is the
duty of government and of society to do
that which will remove depression as far |
as in their power, and to discountenance
and prohibit those methods which enable |
the few to take unjustly from the many.
In proportion as idleness and want exist, !
crime is prevalent; that is, such acts as
the law denounces and Furnishes as
crimes, but statutes thus far have not |
been enacted to reach those business
methods which are morally criminal. I