The Opelousas courier., 1906-01-06
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IT.
Why Brains, Frames and Consciences
Are Strained in Accommodating

Why Brains, FrarneS ana ConScienCeS
Are Strained in Accommodating
Millions.
There seems often to be such a lack
of reasonable human motive in the &C
tons of men commanding large for
tunes, and manipulating financial en-
terprises and movements, that the curl
esity Of the ordinary mortal Is aroused.
This ordinary mortal is, perhaps, EN-
gagged in the common struggle of man.
kind to carr his w and his fam
ily's three meals a day, with some
thing to the good for the condiments
Of life, including his fun, fads and al
truisms, as well as q bit over for sick
ness and old age. He looks with as
constituent and p~erplexity upon the
group of old men who, on the crum-
bling brink of the grave, are still
straining their brains, frames and con-
sciences in the frantic accumulation OF
unnecessary millions.
One of these persistent accumulators,
who was also a ~corgenital miser, was
liked orce by a friend of ours why he
KEPT n thus u~nreasonably piling I'm
1T ~, n1lNons / 9on millions. You
cant AT thene Or drink them, you
nave have r~sssqn to.>qile up more
for your he'll whyacs9sI work so
hard in your old age, ,.1g then.
together:" said our orleans ," o15
miser retorted, Did ylng resolu>
when you were a boy adopted: ia
you keep on winning ,re be Yes"
could you eat them Or drink them?'
"No." why did you do it," For the
fun Of the game" "That's why l do
it," triumphantly cried the old fell
low, that's why I do it,"
The fun of the game" accounts for
a good deal. But there is another
phase Of the matter which continues
to puzzle. How is it that supposedly
honorable men"-often men not with
out a certain chivalry even, and who
are far from being classed by their &C.
q~uaintances as among the depredators
or degenerates-do things in their
function and capacity of financiets
which shook the consciences of the
average decent citizen. 1t is that the
command of great amounts of money,
whether inherited Or acquired, has
somewhat the same psychological eff
feet upon the individual as the being
born into or being taken into a legal
lied aristocracy? Does it set the in
diVidual apart as belonging, as by right
to a caste, an order, a privileged class,
to such an extent that it gets to be
thought a venial offense to stretch the
laws OF ethics a bit in the maintenance
Of ones position in this caste, Or to
increase ones holdings, and Importance
therein? Has not the reader-whom
we suppose to belong to the natural
order of human beings-noticed some
thing in the mind Of the very success
full business man that sets him apart?
The old saying that the gods help
those who help themselves has often
a new and dangerous meaning in the
mind of such a man.
Enormous and brilliant as are his
energies, often his success is so pro-
digal as to astonish even himself, and
there ocn settles upon his conscious
ness a sense of the benefcence, to him
ward, CT the unseen, mysterious pow
ars. The GODS have helped him, indeed,
His God has helped him. He is this
exceptionally successful person, he be-
longs to this peculiar caste of the very
OF the preposterously rich, by divine
right" In the division of profits why
should those be too anxiously and
officially considered by him, who, as
yet, have shown no signs of belonging
in the divine a~ristocracy of worldly
success and earthly wealth! He under,
stands, of course, that those who are
indispensable to this success of his
must be taken into account. But tEe
ordinary ~mOrtal-well, the ordinary
mortal must take care CT himself, even
though the favorite of the divine pow
ers stands in the relation to the or
binary mortal of a sworn and confiden-
TALLY trusted trustee.
Well, there are signs that the or
binary mortal is beginning to take cars
Of himself. 1t would seem to be high
time.-New England Grocer.