p. 1 | THE AGE OF STEAL by J. Barber

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 20, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 48, No. 4.

THE AGE OF STEAL

By J. Barber

In former ages poets, good and bad, Assaulted vice—their aim the public weal. The Iron Age its rhyming censors had, Why not—it needs them more—this Age of Steal? Prone in the dust commercial honor lies, Stark knavery sways the scepter in finance, Motives to statesmen bribery supplies, And wealth and virtue only league by chance. To suit the times even epithets we alter— A treasury thief's no thief, but a “defaulter.”

I like to label scoundrels with their names, Robbers or swindlers, as the case may be; In print to crown them with their several shames Is to the bard a genuine luxury. If your bank-parlor is a bandit's den, Why, call its inmates villainous, I say; And when the State is fleeced by railroad men, Pronounce them till-thieves on the wholesale “lay.”

Why make for rogues a virtual apology, By transcendentalizing crime's technology?

If a half-naked pauper steals a coat, The retail wretch no pitying Christian bails; But if a banker filches millions—note!— He's not arrested, for he only fails. Yet, to my mind, the burglar at his trade, Breaching, at fearful risk, a barred stronghold, Would tilt the scales of justice, fairly weighed, ’Gainst him who safely steals intrusted gold! Yet unto bankruptcy one goes, scarce wincing, The other's tried, condemned, and goes to Sing Sing.

Methinks some well-dressed persons walk the streets, Nay, drive fast teams and shine as sporting stars, Who, but that trickery justice oft defeats, Would, in striped vestments, gaze through prison bars. Widows and orphans, brought to grief by fraud, Too well the glib-tongued, oily rascals know, Who, making Plutus here their only God, May sup, at last, in Tartarus with Pluto. They scarce would be at home, those false Philistines, Placed in a Christian paradise with Christians!

Honor to piety! May every soul That strives for Heaven in earnest, thither win; But much I fear each church's muster-roll Includes some members hand-and-glove with sin. Duly on “stated preachings” these attend, Hoping thereby their sordid schemes to aid; They play at worship for a venal end, And value prayers as capital in trade— Using the outward semblance of religion As fraud's decoy, hypocrisy's stool-pigeon!

The Age of Steal lacks bards with honest pens, To tell its villains in plain words the truth; Drop satire's caustic on its sores and wens, And tear its masks off without fear or ruth. Meanwhile its countless graduates in crime, Each day, each hour, more bold and lawless grow, And Satan chuckles in his own dark clime, O'er human imbecility and woe, May we still hope—or is it a chimera— Amid such scenes, for the “millennial era”? —J. Barber.