Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-08-10
ROCKEFELLERISM.

Rich indeed should be the returns to the public for what it has cost to build up a fortune like Mir -Rockefeller's. public in return for the code Of Dusi- ness principles he has taught it, in re- turn for the havoc their enforcement has cost. ill return for the hypocrisy and cynicism he has fostered! A great business organization-one of the greatest the world has ever se~il-a demonstration of the possibilities of combination. True. but to build his organization he was obliged to perpet- uate and expand. secretly. by force, bribery and trickery a vicious busi- ness system the country at large was striving to overthrow, and whose per petuation and expansion has brought us into one of the most serious public situations since the civil war. Has that paid? He has built hospitals and colleges and endowed schools. True, and those helped have become his open apologists, by taking what they call the large view" or the 'chari- table view or by deliberately shun- ming a consideration of the subject. quietly not seeing in it topic for dis cussiOn. Does it pay to have those who are entrusted with the very sources of our intellectual and moral life blinded or silenced to the ethical quality of the practices of our daily life? Will it pay our colleges to put over their doors the teaching of one of our present-day moTalists. Never dis cuss politics or religion If you would succeed
 He has led a life devoted to charity and the church True. And the prin- cipIes of the religion he professes are SD antagonistic to the principles of the business he practices that the very world which emulates him has been turned into hypocrites and cynics un- der his tutelage. Not only has charity heen tainted by the hypocrisy of his life. the church itself has been pollut- ed. and many man has turned away from its doors because of the servile support it gives to the men of whom NIr Rockefeller is the most eminent type Does all this pay?
 There is no shirking the answer It does not pay. Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer. ugiier. meaneT for the kind of influence he ex- ercises From him we nave receIved no impulse to public duty. only les sons in evadinz it for private greed; no stimulus to nolIer ideals. only lesson iu the further deifcation of gold. no example of enlarged and mo- bIe living. only one of concealment and evasion: no impulse tO free think ing only a lesson in obscuring vital ethical issues by dressing them in the gaThS If piety and generosity. None of those higher things which the pub lie has right to demand from the man to whom it permits great power are returned to it by Mir Rockefeller For NIr Rockefeller has none Of these things to give He has nothing but money and never was there a more striking example If the impotency of money He has neither taste nor cul- tivari0n. ideals nor potent personal ity- He is not a great man. not a hu- man man He is a machi1e-a money machine-stripped bv his Overwhelnl- inE passion of greed o- every quality which makes man worthy of eitizen- ship He has not made gooi- He can not make god IL is not in him He has nothing the aspiring world needs On the contrary. that for vhich he does stand iS q menace to our fr.s de resopuent no1 only or chiefly our free development in coumerce- but vastly no-e important car free deveIopDent in citizez<1ip and in norels-Niss TarbeIl in McClurss