The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-04-10
SNOBOCRATIC PLUTOCRACY.
of the "Jim Fisk"
Cult.

with the tumult of battle for the
rights of men, campaign pressed
simultaneously on a thousand fields
of strategy. Man is great, but men
are greater. The power of the
masses, uplifted in energy and intelli-
gence, is making it's way with the
grinding, irresistible force of great
glacier. But il the masses, including
in this much abused word all those
who depend on wage or salary, and
who do not depend mainly on accumu-
lated earnings, are more alert and
vigorous than ever so is the phalanx
arrayed on the other side. Capital is
merely the growing surplus of the
worlds income. This has tended un-
der the worlds economic conditions to
concentrate. There is no war be-
tween capital. as such and labor. The
battle is between the aggrandizing
power of capital. which seeks more
than it's original rights, and labor
which demands share in the product
of it's toll, which it claims has been
denied to it.
The organized energy of capital is
becoming more and more reSfStleSS in
it's machinery. 1t is rehearsing an old
story now to catalogue all the phases
which this has engendered. One has
but to study the record of the daily
doings of the world to have further
object lessons presented to his MIND.
With the fullest concession to the en-
ormous usefulness of the work which
has been done by capital in carrying
civilization to its present level: one
becomes vividly aware of the demoral-
| ization and evil which it frequently
own ambition. The clashing of ideals
reached all through the social world,
as we'll as through the world of busi-
ness, widening the chasm. Intense
seltishness on the one hand begets as
passionate self-Seeking on the other.
"Jim Fiskism" has been raised to
the nth power among many of the
men who jerk the puppets in the ex-
changes, the markets and the innumer-
able corporate interests Of the country.
The remarkable parsonage, who flour
ished for ten years in New York and
stormed public attention with the
clangor of a brass band, is now almost
forgotten as man. His principal
claim to Immortality is that James
Russell Lowell impaled this gold bug
on a pin and preserved him as speci-
men in that most terrible of cpl
graphs.
World, flesh. and devil gave him all they
Wine, women. wealth. disbelief in good.
| Lifelong he never did his lusts deny
| One pleasure sin could give or money buy
Fame, too, he bought our modern kind Of
The morning papers reeking with his
The halter bilked, a pandar's coward shot
Sent him where he-nay. had forgot, :,
That's passe, they say so who should
Put out with milk and water long ago.
No retribution then? Yes, there's some
Than angry poet e'er distilled in verse.
He had-(could shame or justice this ex
1sviega feeaG Gould,s friendship; dead, the tear
of Tweed.
But if the man, Jim Fisk, is deaC
and rotten in the public memory, the
spirit which he symbOliZed has shot
to a colossal growth. To make money
breed money at any cost to humanity
in the aggregate, to grind to powder
ANYTHING which impedes the roll O.
it's great wheels, to regard business
merely as game where each care
must be played to score points, to scot
at sentiment as blunder as great a.
it would be when blades cross on th'
dueling ground, that has become mor'
and more the spirit of many moderr
financier. We do not always find i
incarnated in as vulgar ruffian a
Gould's twin spirit Of Black Friday
We do not always find it associated
with unbridled lust and self-indul
gence. 1t illustrates even in man.
cases the apparent paradox that it i
consistent in practice with princel
benefactions to objects of public good
with devout genuflections before tn
altar of Christ one day in seven; witt
a holy horror at any expression of dis
belief in the Westminster catechism
But the naked spirit of Jim Fisk
ISM is there, and the sinister fac
cannot be hidden under any mask
The vanity of the tremendous powe
which great wealth gives, whethe
exercised for good or evil, is the ia
root of the growth, and it's tendenc
. is to make ambition as callouS as tn
grossest sensuality.