The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1905-07-29
aan MnAN1No o. RocKaPaLLna1sM


Mss Zarpsll in AcClEys FER ANsEs5.
Rich indeed should be the returns to the pub
lie for what it has cost to build up fortune
like Mr.. Rockefeller's. But what has MIR.
Rockefeller given the public in return for the
code of business principles be has taught it, in
return for the havoc their enforcement has
cost. in return for the hypocrisy and cynicism
he has fostered? A great business organiza-
tion-one of the greatest the world has ever
seen-a demonstration of the possibilities of
combination. True, but to build his organiza-
ton he was obliged to perpetuate and expand,
secretly, by force bribery and trickery vicious
business system the country at large was striv-
ing to overthrow, and whose perpetuatiOn and
expansion has brought us into one of the most
serious public situations since the Civil War.
Has that paid? = ehas 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 charitable view, or by deliberately shun-
ming consideration of the subject, quietly not
seeing in it topic for discussion. Does it pay
to have those who are entrusted with the very
sources of our intellectual and moral life blind.
ed or silenced to the ethical quality of the
practices of our daily life? viii it pay our
colleges to put over their doors the teachings of
cuss politics or religion if you would succeed"
He has led life devoted to charity and the
church. True And the principles of the re-
ligion he processes are so antagonistic To the
principles of the business he practises that the
very world which emulates him has been turn
ed into hypocrites and cynics under his tutel-
age. y Not only has charity been tainted
by the hypocrisy of his life the church itself
has been polluted and many man has turned
away from its doors because of the servile sup
krxs.x 80 Ia ofrr rhon NJ poolr.a
Teller is the most eminent type Does all this
payi
There is no Sinking the answer. 1t does
not pay. Our national lie is on every side dis
tinctly poorer, uglier, meaner for the kind of
influence he exercises. From him we have
received no impulse to public duty, only les
sons in evading it for private greed; no stinl-
illus to nobler IDEALS only a lesson in the
further dedication of gold; no example of
enlarged and noble living, only one of con-
cealment and evasion; no impulse to free
thinking, only lesson in obscuring vital
ethical issues by dressing them in the garbs Of
piety and generosity. None Of those higher
things which the public has Alright to demand
from the man to whom it permits great power
are returned to it by Mr.. Rockefeller. For
Mr.. Rockefeller has none of these things to
give. He has nothing but money, and never
was there more striking example of the inn
potency of money He has neither taste nor
cultivation, ideals nor potent personality. He
is not great man, not human man. He is
Machines money machine-stripped by
his overwhelming passion of greed Of every
quality which makes man worthy of citizen.
ship. He has not made good. He cannot
make good. 1t is not in him. He has moth
ing the aspiring world needs. On the con-
trary, that for which he does stand is a menace
to our free development not only or chiefly
our free development in commerce, but, vastly
more important, our free development in citi-
zenship and in morals.