The Detroit times., 1910-11-02
POINTS TO FASHIONABLE
NEWPORT AS PLACE OF VICE
Bishop Williams Says only Difference
In In Rainent--Makes Attack On
"Evll Rich"


CLEVELAND, Nov. bishop
Charles d. williams. OF Detroit pit-
terly attacked amassers OF wealth.
trusts and legal and illegal corpora
tons, Monday night. before the CleVe-
land Council of Sociology. The single
tax theories of Henry George were
strongly advocated by the clergyman.
He declared present day corruption
political. social, and industrial-due
to improper and poorly founded lesis-
lation Bishop Williams spoke on
Wealth-Productive, Predatory and
Parasitic"
To-day there is great uprising
against wealth." said Bishop Will
liams. To-day the millionaire Is view
ed with suspicion. Before the civil
war millionaires were as scarce as
roses IN December: today they are
as plentiful as blackbirds in August.
suddenly there has come change.
The unsophisticated people have be-
gun TO suspect that some or those
glitterinR peaks (the multi-millfon-
aires) may be the concealed volcan-
oes which every now and then deyas-
tate the common prosperity with
panics.
And why Is the multi-millionaire
SO unpopular? II Is matter or COM
mon observation that as soon as the
loudest-mouthed agitator accumulates
little capital he Joins the ranks OF
the extreme conservative. he be
comes a tand-patter.' Wealth, par
ticularly sudden wealth, de-humanizes
its possessor.
And inordinate wealth commonly
knocks the soul out of a man. II you
want to find the dangerous classes In
our civilization, you will find them in
two places-the slums and the villas
of Newport. The vices OF both places
are identical. only the one is clothed
I'm purple and fine linen and the other
in rags and tatters. And you will
and more humanness and wholesome
ness In the slums than In the villas"
In describing wealth, Bishop Will
liams said that II was not money,
that II was not stocks and bonds, and
that It was not our natural resources.
Wealth, he said, are the things pro-
ductive or made that meet human
wants and desires. Wealth may be
acquired in three ways. II may be
the result OF labor and wit applied
TO natural resources; 1t may be stol-
en-. or II may come as a gift.
productive wealth is the fruit OF
productive activity, which should be
free, embarrassed, unhampered. and
utterly unburdened. We ought TO lay
no tax on energy, ingenuity and In
dustry. And let me tell you that not
one OF our swollen fortunes has been
really made by productive activity,
earned as an equivalent for services
rendered.
The other two forms of wealth are
predatory and parasitic. The two
might we'll be called privilege
privilege is a private law OF par
ticular and partial application. Actu-
ally. IL is a private pull Practically,
Il is the power OF getting something
for nothing. They are privileges IL
legal. and privileges legal. There is
the secret rebate, TO which the Stan.
dard Oil iniquity owes its origin.
Then there is the tariff, which en-
ables the United States Steel Corpor-
alton TO steal legally, TO charge Amer
lean consumers more than Is paid in
England and elsewhere which en-
ables the agricultural machinery trust
to sell It's reapers and threshers to
Canadians for less than 1t charges us.
"The way to remedy the present
social and economic evil is to stinu-
late and encourage productive activi-
~, open every natural resource, and
give II It's full reward-the whole of
its earnings"