The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1901-08-22

"Oh, stocks, enterprises-an that
sort of thing, you know" The plain
young man has hardly enough money
to pay his board and has to wear
clothes after they are out of fashion
and deny himself all the luxuries.
After awhile he gets tired of his plod-
ding, and he goes to the man who has
achieved suddenly large estate, and
he says: Just show me how 1t is
DONE" And he is shown. He soon
learns how, and although he is al
most all the time idle now and has
resigned his position in the bank or
the factory or the store, he has
more money than he ever had, trades
off his silver watch for gold one
with flashing chain, sets his hat
little farther over on the side of his
head than he ever did, smokes better
cigars and more of them. He has his
hand in! Now, if he can escape the
penitentiary for three or four years
he will get into political circles, and
he will get political jobs and will
have something to do with harbors
and pavements and docks. Now he
has got so far along he is safe for
perdition.
It is quite long road sometimes
for man to travel before he gets in
to the romance of crime. Those are
caught who are only in the prosaic
stage of it. If the sheriffs and con-
stables would only leave them alone
a little while, they would steal as
we'll as anybody. They might not be
able to steal a whole railroad, but
they could master load of pig iron.
Now, 1 always thank God when l
find an estate like that 60 to smash.
It is plague struck, and it blasts the
nation. I thank God when it goes
into such a wreck it can never be
gathered up again. 1 want it to be-
come so loathsome and such an in
sufferable stencil that honest young
men will take warning. If God
should put into money or its repre-
sentative the capacity to go to its
lawful owner, there would not be q
bank or safety deposit in the Unit
ed States whose walls would not be
blown out and mortgages would rip
and parchments would rend and gold
would shoot and beggars would get
on horseback and stock gamblers
would go to the almshouse.
And remember, that the man who
gets his gain by iniquity will soon
lose it ALL One moment after his de-
parture from life he will not own an
opera house, he will not own GER
tificate of stock, he will not own one
dollar of government securities, and
the poorest boy that stands on the
street with penny in his pocket,
| looking at the funeral procession of
the dead cheat as he goes by, will
have more money than that man who
one week previous boasted that he
controlled the money market.
Oh, there is such fearful fascina-
tion in this d:y about the use of trust
funds. 1t has got to be popular to
take the funds of others and specu-
late with them. There are many who
are practicing that iniquity. Almost
every man in the course of his life
has the property of others put in his
care. He has administered, perhaps,
for a dead friend; he is an attorney,
and money passes from debtor to
creditor through his hands; or he is
in a commercial esta ablishment and
gets a salary for the discharge OF his
RESPONSIBILITIES; or he is treasurer of
ircti{I,finn an6
money for the suffering goes through
his hands: or he has some office in
city or state or nation, and taxes and
subsidies and supplies and salaries
are in his hands. Now, that is a
trust. That is as sacred trust as
God can. give a man. 1t is the con-
centration of confidence. Now, when
that man takes that money, the
money of others, and goes to specu-
lating with it for his own purposes,
he is guilty of theft, falsehood and
perjury, and in the most intense
sense of the word is miscreant.
So there has been a great deal ot
fascination thrown around ibertin-
ism. Society is very severe upon the
impurity that turks around the alleys
and low haunts of the town. The law
pursues it, smites it, incarcerates it,
tries to destroy it. You know as well
as / that society becomes lenient in
proportion as impurity becomes af-
| fluent or is in elevated circles, and
finally society is silent or disposed to
| palliate. Where is the judge, the jury,
the police officer that dare arraign the
| wealthy libertine? He walks the
streets, he rides in the parks, he
faunts his iniquity in the eyes of the
pure. The hag of uncleanness look.
out of the tapestried window. Where
is the law that dares take the brazen
wretches and put their faces in an iror
frame of state prison window?
Sometimes it. seems to me as If So
| ciety were going back to the state o1
morals of Herculaneum, when il
sculptured it's vileness on pillars and
temple wall and nothing but the lava
of burning mountain could hide The
immensity of crime. At what time Goo
will rise up and extirpate these evil.
upon society know not, nor whether
He will do it by fire or hurricane OIL
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