The unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the control of a few men is a sign of the last days, and the methods employed in the financial world testify to that decline of moral character which fulfils the prophecies concerning the condition of things just before the coming of the Lord. The first of the eighteen specifications in the indictment against the professed Christian world in the last days when “perilous times shall come,” is that, “men shall be lovers of their own selves,” and this spirit of selfishness leads to the utter disregard of moral principles in the race for wealth. During the past year the attention of the public has been called to some of the ways of “frenzied finance,” but the force of the revelations has been somewhat broken, from the fact that they were largely in the nature of State’s evidence, the informer being one of the principals in the transactions whose wickedness he was exposing. More recently, however, there have been carefully conducted investigations into the methods of managing the three largest insurance companies in this country, and the revelations made have greatly stirred the public mind. The betrayal of the trust reposed in some men who have enjoyed the confidence of the people as being “captains of industry” has caused both surprise and astonishment, and has awakened a feeling of suspicion as to the trustworthiness of financiers in general. The following paragraph from the Independent (New York) is a dispassionate statement of the feeling of many who have followed the course of these revelations:— There have been other times when the public has been profoundly shocked by revelations of the untrustworthiness of men of high repute, to whom great private and public responsibilities were committed. There was great humiliation and distress of mind when the scandals connected with the building of the Union Pacific Railroad impeached the good name of men prominent in the national Congress. The Star Route frauds dragged more than one high name down to ruin and disgrace. The great bank malfeasances at Fall River, at Philadelphia, and elsewhere, and such failures as that of Grant and Ward, shook the confidence of thousands of plain folk in the integrity of men supposed to be above suspicion, and left everybody asking, Whom, then, can we trust? But all these instances were trifling in comparison with the rottenness that has been brought4to light in the past two or three years. Making every allowance for prejudice and exaggeration, the facts that have been made public in the writings of Miss Tarbell, of Mr. Lawson, and of Lincoln Steffens are shown by recent disclosures to be but the fringe of the terrible truth that even yet is probably not more than half known.
Confidence is an essential factor in the business world. The loss of confidence means a crippling of industrial and commercial development,—a stagnation in the business world. When the present tendency toward socialism is encouraged and intensified by a loss of public confidence in those who control the wealth of the country, the way is all prepared for a time of trouble. We have no assurance that better times are coming. There has been a general slump in the public conscience, and the only thing that can lift men to a higher plane of conduct, the power of God as revealed in the gospel, has been set aside in favor of a merely human philosophy. In the olden time when men “did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient,” and the same thing is evidently being repeated before our eyes. The purpose in calling attention to these things is that we may realize more fully the need of preaching “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Those who will heed this message may escape “the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Divine power is required to keep any of us in these perilous times.