The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1915-08-26
THE LOVE OF MONEY.
War Has Made Men Judge Their Eel
lows by What They DO.

preserved passion out of many. But
there is a kind of decorum about
money which makes the love of 1t
peculiarly dangerous, since 1t con-
ceals from the lover the nature and
effects of his passion. If a man
wants too much food, he is evidently
greedy. If woman wants too many
clothes, she is evidently vain. But
money is not a thing, like clothes or
food. that can be enjoyed; ,and so
greed for money is not direct greed.
but indirect. 1t is civilized means
of conducting the struggle for life,
which to a great extent conceals
from those who use it the ugliness
and the animal nature of that strug-
gle. 1t is, in fact, kind of diplom-
acy, politely conducted, behind which
there is war; but the diplomats often
do not see the war. They deal only
in documents, scraps of paper; and
they are not aware, except at Sec
cnd hand, what all these documents,
and the struggle about them, mean
to the mass of men. The rich man
who is greedy for money does not
put it to himself that he is greedy for
the things that money will buy. Al
though money keeps its actual pow
er, and is his own mind, to divorce
it from it's real meaning. 1t becomes
to him symbol of something much
finer and more romantic than 1t IS.
It infames his imagination and the
Imagination of a great part OF the
poorer world, too, as if it were not
merely a means of buying material
things, but a personal quality in the
man who possesses it. Money, it is
said, can be used for great and noble
purposes, which is true; but the man
who is greedy for money does not
want to use it for such purposes.
Often he does not even want to buy
an tinordinate number of material
things. His greed has become ao-
stract and romantic. 1t is greed for
a symbol, forgetful of what the SYM
boil implies. And this greed for a
symbol spreads among people that
otherwise greedy, who do manage
by means of money to engage ruth
lessly in the struggle for life with
out ever being aware that they are
red OF tooth and claw. The decorum
Of money wraps itself round them
and hides from them the character
and the results of their own greed.
They. see only lists of securities;
they do not even see heaps Of gold;
and, even if they do engage in
quarrel about money with some one
else no less greedy for it. there is
only a lawsuit decently conducted,
which may cause decent ruin to the
loser that the winner never sees.
All he knows is that he has got judg-
ment in his favor. which means OF
course, that he takes certain num-
Der of material things from his op-
,ponent. But it does not mean that
to him. To him it means kind OF
religious justification, giving him
moral as we'll as legal right to own
the money he gets through it.
SIS That we do unconsciously rever-
ence money more than the things We
get with it is proved by two curious
facts. You can give man anything
except money without affecting your
relations with him; and mans de-
pendents may steal many things
from him without calling it theft,
but they know always that taking
money is stealing. Evidently, then,
money is more sacred than any other
kind of material possessions, but
whyo 1t only differs from 9TH
er material possessions in that
it is a means of getting them, that
while you have money you keep your
power of choice because you have
not yet chosen. So if YOU give money
you only give the power of choice,
and if you steal money you steal the
power of choice; and this power
seems to us more sacred than any of
the things that can be chosen. We
do reverence the man who has
great deal of power, just because he
has not yet chosen, and because he
haps, he might choose nobly or gen.
erously. But We may be sure that,
il he is greedy Of the power, he will
not choose nobly or generously-ih
fact, that the man who can ennoble
money is he who cares very little for
it. The war makes all these things
palmer to US than they were in time
of peace. We now see greed for
money as it is, and we no longer rev.
erence the rich man because of what
he might do with his money, since
we have other tests forced upon US