The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-05
wanton Wealth.

What is an art gallery, or hospital, or a university or any other donation of a fortune which can no longer be used, when we think of the warp and twist and perversion and corruption or all the principles which we are striv- ing to inculeate in the minds of Amer lean youthg N
 A,man comes to Chicago, 1t has many smilas of street railways. a city coun- ell and some able attorneys. and also some judgcs and the State Legisla- ture is not far distant. He. sees the possibilities in combination of these clements but also recognizes the neces> sity of keeping within the pale Of the law-and money can make a law so pale as to be hardly discernable. In a former experience he had skirmished toe close to the border and got over the line and into prison. Tn Chicago he does not repeat the mistake, being ably assisted by the various people pos sessed of power He works his com binaticn successfully. The decent peo- pie of Chicago protest, but he cleans up millions, and then goes to New York and London. He puts his wife and other women in palaces. The vast for tune whose growth sent It's fine tendrils down into the nickels of the toiler, the D )orly paid clerk and 'shopgirl of Chi cago, is used to astound the business
  It is such n mixing of business and badness of the artistic and the shame less, of the greatest talent and worst passions, of ambition for place and ut- ter disregard for all that makes place desirable, as has hardly had a parallel even in this land of astonishing per formances.
 Now the man is dead and buried. But the lesson of his career should not be buried with him. These conspicu- ous and startling examples of the wan tonness of wealth should teach us the necessity of a firm attitude toward it. We have been fighting polygamy in Utah, but polygamy in Utah Is dying practice compared with what Is going on in some of these circles of unlimited wealth. A man of millions married q young woman who few months before was the wife of another man, and the daily press openly intimated that the transfer was made on a financial basis. Are we coming to think of such things as privilege of great wealth? Or arc we to look upon them as in class with the purchase of handsome slave girls. which was charged against planters when Harriet Beecher Stowe was stirring the nation? Slavery was demoralizing. but it did draw the color line in protection of the white woman.
 Ttte unmitigated meanness of unlim- ited wealth draws no line anywhere, but lays its clutch on everything with in the range of its evil eye.
 Every day the greed and wanton ra- pacity of what Is justly called preda- tory wealth is exposed by some new revelation. If anywhere in the land the earth opens up a new flow of oil it must be made to empty into the treas ury of the Standard oil Company. No law, no legislature, no court, no busi- ness enterprise, no anything wil be per- mitted to send the stream in any other direction. Any man who attempts to do business for himself in this line will be set upon as if he were a com mon enemy of his kind.
 Every day 1t is made clear that com binations and trusts are in evil cove nant with railroad companies to put greater gains into their cOffers and to put other men out of business. It is done in defiance of law and outrages every principle and practice of fair ness between men. And yet it is done at persistently as if there were no law against 1t. and by men who consider themselves reputable citizens and de- liver advice to young men on the way to honest success.
 To call halt on this wanton wealth is the supreme duty of the hour. We talk about a revival. but how can we have a revival unless we dare to read the Sermon on the Mount and the para bles of Jesus Christ to all men who support the church and give to Chris tian education. revival which would not tend to the overthrow of the sys- tenn established by wantOn wealth would not be a revival in any sense worthy of the name.