Fanning the Discontent

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 9, 1908

Fanning the Discontent

In this time of general financial depression the marked contrasts between the rich and the poor are commented upon more frequently, and perhaps more bitterly, than in times of the usual prosperity. An editorial in one of the recent magazines puts it this way:—

Think of a fortune spent on a tennis court or a mushroom cellar, of five hundred thousand dollars spent for a painting or a conservatory, or a quarter of a million for a necklace, or five dollars for a single rose, while abject misery and poverty huddle in dens, scarce fit for a pig-sty, and shiver with cold and starve with hunger! The selfishness of extravagance is monstrous and cruel, and the destitute feel it and revolt against it.

A characteristic of the last days, when perilous times should come, and one which lies at the basis of the whole catalogue of evils, is that “men shall be lovers of their own selves;” and the reckless expenditure of money to gratify the capricious whims of those who have inherited, rather than earned, their wealth, is one of the ways in which this selfishness finds expression. To emphasize in such needless ways the wide gulf between the rich and the poor is contributing to that feeling of discontent which is likely in the by no means distant future to manifest itself in indiscriminate plundering. What has happened in Russia may happen in other countries.