The Washington times., 1905-07-17

most irresistible to the employment
Of a token of little or no commercial
value wherever the real wealth of the
community is less than its require
ments for q medium of exchange. The
debtor always preferring to defer an
obligation rather than to pay it.
Wealth, on the other hand, consists
not in tokens but in things, such as
land, cattle, grain. mills. means OF
communication. dwellings, clothes,
and other things essential to human
life and welfare. Wealth is something
real: it is the thing for which money
stands as q mere abstraction and
means of exchange, it is one of the
necessary and legitimate objects of
human endeavor and without which
progress beyond savagery would be
impossible. Whereas. money is at best
but an image, a shadow, a reflection
OF wealth, of something real, of the
substance that supports life.
In this view of the matter the wor-
ship Of money is seen to be a base
idoiatry; the devotion to wealth mere
ly dedication of our primal wants
and necessities
Wealth may and does exist apart
from money and entirely Independent
OF it, but only in strictly agricultural
or nomadic communities; and in such
cases barter takes the place Of g
medium of exchange. But money is
essential to commerce; it is the life
blood of trade, it is the foundation of
the modern theory of credit, which
is as great an advance over money
as money is over barter.
And right here is where we find
the root of much of the condemna-
ton of the worship of money; it
cOmesfrCm the classes who possess the
real wealth Of the world, the laborers
and the landowners. These classes
are instinctively opposed to the trad
er, the banker, and the broker: they
have the substance and the CONNER
cial classes have the shadow. In an
agricultural age the commercial
classes are barely tolerated; in an age
of transition they are accorded GER
tain legal rights and privileges; and
in a commercial age, like the present,
they tyrannize over the laborers and
the farmers and set themselves up as
the highest class of society. The de-
Runciation of money is the cry of the
conservative classes of the world It
is the protest Of the substance against
its own elongated shadow
Money, being an abstraction, a kind
OF algebra of wealth, is seldom under
stood or appreciated even by those
who live by its formulas; to the pro-
ducing classes it is an abomination
and source of terror, their sense OF
pTopriety being shocked by the Law
ish and ridiculous expenditures upon
the most evanescent and unsubstan-
tial forms of wealth.
People reason like this. 1t is per-
fectly proper for a great landed pro-
prietor TO decorate his house with
/ the flowers from his own gardens, but
for a rich trader to hire a hotel and
I'LL il with orchids and roses is a
sign of degeneracy and the beginning
of the end. But the truth is the great
. landed proprietor and the rich trader
are TO be judged from the same stand
point, if they give their parties mere
ly to show their wealth, or money,
then they are snobs and cads; if they
give them for the purposes of glut-
tony and debauchery they are mere
libertines; if they give them in order
to bring cultivated, pleasant, and
thoughtful people together for the
purposes of rational intercourse, they
are philanthropists and public bene-
factors.
The abuse of money and wealth is
I not confined to those who use it with
harm to others; it is found also where
mere ease and sloth are purchased
with it; man not attaining his normal
development without work
It is just as stupid unwisely to con
demn the possessors of wealth and
money as it is silly to cape at them
/ II IS as snObbish to traduce the rich
! indiscriminately as it is to pay court
TO them. The true attitude is per
sonal independence and contempt fol
/ abuses,
N pl,il.dolnhia T. go. i. ..,.l..