The Closing Out of the Small Business Man
“LESLIE’S WEEKLY” suggests that “the reason why so many men are out of work is because so many little business shops and factories are closed.” And then the Weekly goes on to state, on the authority of the Wall Street Journal, that during the first six months of last year “fifty little woolen mills in New England towns went to the wall.” Concentration and federation is becoming more and more the order of the day. We have concentration in business that is absorbing the small business man and making him merely a wheel in the great machine controlled by a few big men. Labor is being federated and organized, and accordingly it is coming more and more under the control and dictation of a few leaders. In like manner the religious organizations of the world are federating and combining. Men talk the theory that this federation and combination plan will result in the promotion of the spirit of brotherhood and progress. But our common sense, if we had no other illumination, ought to show us that such tendencies as are so strongly in progress to-day must result inevitably in the stress of revolution and riot. It cannot possibly be otherwise. But we are not left alone to the illumination of reason or common sense. The Bible is very specific and clear in telling us of the scenes of rioting and violence that will characterize the closing hours of time, and we see the forces already gathering that are without question to fulfill the inspired predictions.