The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-12-08
ALL HAVE LUST OF GAIN
ACTIONS OF MEN, WOMEN AND Chill
DREN CONTROLLED BY MONEY.
So Says Bishop Potter I'm a Pessimfstic
Address on the sociological
Conditions of the World.

NEW HAVEN, Conn.,, Dec. 7.-Bishop
Potter, in an address last night before
the Church Club of New Haven, spoke on
Wealth and Commonwealth" "I choose
this subject because of it's paramount i'm
portance," he said. Divorce, crime and
|>corruption in all our cities have one root.
the lust of money. The one eager, domi-
ant hunger which salutes us from one
end to another of our broad land is the
passion. the hunger, the greed of gain.
Challenge what method you will in the
complicated web of our Industrial, political
or social life and you will find the ques-
ton of gain behind it. Listen to what
scandal you may in the haunts of poll
ticians, in the camps of soldiers, in the
balls of fashion, the final standard in the
whole business may be expressed by a
dollar mark.
Listen to the talk of children as the
measure and compare their elders. Hear
a group of young girls whose fresh youth
one would think ought in the matter Of
their most tender and sacred affections
To be as free from sordid instinct as from
the faint of a Goddess cynicisnl, and you
will find that they have their price and
are not 20 be had without ii any more
than a Circassian slave in the market of
Bagdad.
Go where you may, talk with whom you
will-with clergymen estimating the prom
Use of a field for spiritual labor, with
women rating the claims of other women
upon their sordid recognition, with the
heads of great universities paralyzed with
fright lest the indiScretiOnS of some plain
spoken professor, who tells his age the
truth in an hour when it sorely needs to
hear Ii, shall cut down the revenues of
the college-it is no matter, the commercial
nI1nCffnn lie NJ tho hnffnnr Of II nn6 Hno;lOz
usually all the others.
we read the other day of a woman at
the horse show whose attire was a dress
made of the skins of unborn lambs. What
do you think of such a thing? Is not this
& relic of barbarism?
THE situation, grave and threatening as
IS is to all that is best in a nations life,
Is the result Of causes that are not far
To seek. They are to be found in the spirit
of the age. in the conditions of our ma
tional life and in the standard of our per-
sonal values.
1--WE may shout till we are black in the
face that We are the greatest and the brav-
est and the biggest and strongest and
richest Nation in Christendom, but there
comes a strange awe in the heart as we
turn back and read of what kind of stun
the first corners TO these shores mainly
were.
I'm England a man of science discovers
an antiseptic dressing for gunshot wounds,
another discovers a star, another the mys-
teries of deap-sea sounding and these are
E1ted presently 10 De peers or the realm.
with us the scholar. the man of science.
the inventor. the pioneer in m or
the arts. toll, delve and discover and en-
r.ch their age, and We distinguish them too
often only by disputing their achievements
or by appropriating without rewarding
them for the products of their genius.
If material wealth be the end of being,
If accumulation be the worthiest aim of
human ambition, If the palaces or the buy
ing of legislatures be the final and highest
distinction possible to modern manhood.
then We must needs look them in the face.
I'm the country in which you and live
what we call civilization has undergone
what is nothing less than a gigantic rev.
o,ution. The huge aggregations OF capital
which have practically taken from the
hands of the individual the independent
disposition of his labor and nave intro
duced into his existence paralyzing uncer-
tainty as 10 both his comforts and his
future, and gradual widening of the
breaches that separate classes from
classes, and the competitions tina while
they cheaper the necessities of life. in
crease the elements OF perplexity and un-
certainty as to how great multitudes may
obtain them-all these are features of our
modern situation. full OF danger.
For one. l have no hope that any mech
anism OF legislation, any system of So
cialism. any scheme of agrarian distribu-
ton or taxation will In the remotest degree
remove them The church OF God must
go up. must stay. up. upon a much higher
plane than that"