Money Mad

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Apr 3, 1913

THAT we have reached a time in the history of the world when money madness is at the root of much of our trouble is the opinion of the Thrice-a-Week World of March 17, 1913. It says:—

What but money madness is at the root of most of our political, social, and industrial troubles? Are not our extortionate tariffs and our swollen combinations and trusts evidence of money madness? . . .

For more than a generation we have been governing this country on the theory that money was more important than justice, that prosperity was more to be desired than principle. We have summoned the poor of all the earth to join us. We have sent women, girls, and children into our thundering mills. We have stripped the farms in order to glut the factories. We have prided ourselves in the figures of our wealth rather than in the knowledge of our freedom, virtue, and happiness.

To be money mad is to be cruel and corrupt. To be money mad is to buy votes and sell laws and traffic in human life and health. To be money mad is to oppress the weak and grind the faces of the poor. To be money mad is to develop a race of bribe takers as well as bribe givers, and to inflict upon the country wolfish poverty side by side with wolfish riches.

The latest proof that we are money mad is presented in the theory now fashionably indorsed that men and women may be honest if they have money, and must necessarily be dishonest without it.