The Industrial Conflict in the Light of Revelation.
By Geo. W. Rine
FABULOUS INCREASE OF WEALTH IN THE END OF THE AGE.
THE wealth of the Caucasian world to-day is phenomenal. It is bewildering in its magnitude. But the most startling and impressive fact relative to the stupendousness of the world's wealth to-day is, that by far the greater part of it has been created and amassed during the last fifty years. Again, during the last ten of those fifty years the growth of wealth has been greater than during the first forty. Many of the greatest statesmen and economists of the age regard this recent fabulous growth of wealth as one of the most marvelous and impressive phenomena of all history. It is a momentous fact, not understood by political and financial leaders, that thousands of years ago the exact present-day conditions of the monetary and labor world were graphically foretold in the “sure word of prophecy.” These “conditions” were thus foretold in order that they might be to God’s people one of the means by which they should know that they were living near the close of time. The status of things in the world of Capital and Labor to-day is, in fact, one of the most conspicuous of last-day omens. The apostle James, in the first nine verses of the fifth chapter of his epistle, gives perhaps the most complete and direct prediction bearing upon this subject. I quote, from the American Revised Version, his words: “Come now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days. . . . Ye have lived delicately in the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter.” But fail not to note that it is “in the last days” that the rich hoard their treasures. By reading verses 7 to 9 we again see that the prophecy has its fulfilment just preceding the coming of our Lord. The prophet Isaiah also, in a short vision, looked down through the vista of centuries, and exclaimed, in reference to the last days: “Their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures.” Ch. 2:7. By referring to verses 2 and 21 it is seen at once that in this chapter we have a last-day prophecy. With what striking exactness these inspired predictions find their verification and fulfilment in our own day! This is especially true in this our country, where the evidences of such fulfilment stand out more conspicuously than elsewhere. Observe the gigantic leaps made in the growth of our Aggregate National Wealth
During the nineteenth century. From 1800 to 1870 it grew from one billion dollars to thirty-one billion; in 1880 it had swollen to nearly thirty-four billion; and in 1902 it was estimated by our best statisticians to have developed to the colossal sum of ninety-seven billion dollars. Such strides in the evolution of national wealth is without a parallel or precedent. Between 1860 and 1870 a million producers of wealth were destroyed by war, and two vast armies devoted their stupendous energies to the destruction of property; yet, in spite of all this, the wealth we created during that decade was enough to cover all the losses of the war in both North and South, and leave a surplus margin of $116,000,000. The average daily increase of our country’s wealth during the twenty years from 1870 to 1890 was $5,000,000. The rate of increase of our wealth during the nineteenth century was more than six times as great as the rate of increase of our population. And in both Great Britain and France the national wealth increased five times as much during the last century as during all the preceding ages. In less than three and a half years, July, 1896, to December, 1899, the United States added $476,000,000 to its actual money circulation, or 31.5 per cent. The total money of this nation passed the two billion-dollar mark in February, 1900. The production of gold in the United States alone in 1898 reached the enormous total of $64,000,000, being $11,000,000 in excess of what was produced in 1896. The yearly production of the world grew from $202,000,000 in 1896 to $288,000,000 in 1898. If in 1860 all the money of the United States could have been divided up, giving an equal share to every man, woman, and child, each would have received $13.85. By the year 1900 this per capita share of the circulation had nearly doubled, being $25.98. Stocks and Bank Clearings.
In 1894 the number of shares of stock bought and sold on ’Change in New York was a little less than 50,000,000; in 1897 the number rose to 77,000,000, and by 1899 the number leaped to the colossal sum of 112,000,000 shares. These stupendous leaps and bounds in the New York stock market were relatively paralleled in the markets of the other large cities of the country. Nothing will give more convincing proof of the terrific velocity with which trade, and therefore wealth, is growing than the bank clearings of American cities. In 1880 the bank clearings of the city of New York aggregated $12,000,000,000. In 1899 they were exactly five times as great, amounting to the fabulous sum of $60,000,000,000. Those of the city of Pittsburg, in 1899, exceeded those of the previous year by 57 per cent, amounting in 1899 to $1,528,000,000. Giant Strides in the Development of Our Foreign Commerce.
A noted writer on economic subjects stated, in a recent number of the Saturday Evening Post, that in the five fiscal years from June, 1896, to June, 1901, the people of this country bought from the rest of the world products to the value of $3,750,542,752. They sold to the world during the same five years products to the value of $6,277,196,032. The balance in our favor was $2,526,653,280. It amounted to more than all the present gold mines of the entire world at the current rate of output could produce in twenty-five years. There was not enough cash available to pay for Europe’s purchases of American products. Hence Europe began to send back the old American I. O. U.’s—the mortgages on our railways, farms, and factories. American securities held by Europeans are now returning home. During the years 1897 to 1899 inclusive, more than a billion dollars of American indebtedness was wiped from the ledgers of Europe. The United States ceased being a debtor nation, and became a creditor nation, in 1899. During the year 1903 our foreign trade reached the highest watermark in its history, amounting to $2,500,000,000. Our cotton exports alone brought to the United States $378,000,000 of Europe’s gold. Just think of it, we exported more than $1,000,000 worth of cotton for every day of the year. In 1903 we imported $20,000,000 more gold than we sent out. On every day of last December we sold to the rest of the world sixteen million dollars’ worth of our products. The Department of Commerce and Labor at Washington has compiled a summary of our country’s exports during the ten years from 1893 to 1903, which contains many facts significantly pertinent to our theme. The outgoing business of New York and other Atlantic seaports increased a little more than fifty per cent during that decade; while the exports of the Pacific Coast cities exactly doubled during the same time. Still more marvelous was the export record of the gulf cities, in the same few years, actually increasing 150 per cent. I here add a bunch of cold, hard statistics—cold and hard, yet as thrilling as a novel. The export trade of Detroit, for example, grew from $7,000,000 in 1893 to nearly $23,000,000 in 1903; of Galveston from $36,000,000 to $144,000,000; of Mobile and Pensacola from $3,000,000 to $15,000,000; of Puget Sound from $5,000,000 to $27,000,000. These figures sound Utopian. But they are stern facts, contributing to the amassing of that plethora of wealth which the rapt vision of the prophet anticipated when he exclaimed: “Their land is full of silver, and gold; neither is there any end of their treasure.” Wealth Development in the South.
During the years 1889 and 1898 the value of cotton goods manufactured in the Southern States increased 158.5 per cent. The South has now 6,000,000 spindles at work, representing a capital of $160,000,000. In twenty-five years the annual output of iron in those states leaped from 4,000,000 tons to 40,000,000 tons. The value of her yearly cotton crop now exceeds the value of the entire output of gold in all the world. The value of her iron and steel manufactures is now five times as great as it was in 1894. A contributor to the World’s Work, for October, 1903, wrote that a well-known financier had recently estimated that $300,000,000 had been added to the wealth of the South in the preceding two years. “No personal accounts, large or small, wanted here; we do business only with large corporations.” This was the answer the president of one of the $25,000,000 Wall Street banks gave to an inquirer as to the smallest deposit that bank would receive. The answer was virtually a notification that this was practically a “wholesale” bank. “Such an answer,” writes Ivy Lee, in the Saturday Evening Post, “would not have been given five years ago. But this is a new age. The billion-dollar trust and the $25,000,000 bank are to Wall Street what wireless telegraphy is to electricity—wonders.” The demands of modern4industry are so vast that they often require the negotiation of $5,000,000 or more upon a few hours’ notice, and hence have these new-era banks come into being—“veritable incarnations of power, holding, indeed, the safety and happiness of a whole people in their hands.” Present-day banking knows no national boundary lines. It is a part of the great Empire of Finance, a dominion over which Gold wields an absolute scepter. The transcendent magnitude which this empire has attained in these first twentieth-century years may be imagined from the fact that the banking power of the world in 1890 was represented by a little less than sixteen billion dollars in capital, surplus, note issues, and deposits. At the close of 1902 this figure had grown to more than twenty-seven billion dollars—an increase of eleven billion dollars, or more than seventy per cent. It is only since the Spanish-American War that American banking has made itself felt throughout the world. Each of our largest banking institutions, of New York, Boston, and Chicago particularly, has its correspondents in every important commercial center in Europe. These banks keep deposits in many of the great foreign banks, in order to be prepared on a moment’s notice to negotiate a loan of from one to twenty millions whenever some Titanic European corporation or syndicate may call for such loans. Recent Multiplying of Millionaires.
The writer of an editorial article in the Pacific Unitarian, July, 1903, says: “There is much that is startling and impressive in these early years of the new century, but perhaps the most extraordinary circumstance is the stupendous increase in wealth.” He goes on to say that fifty years ago there were in New York City 25 men worth a million dollars or more. Twenty years ago there were 294. To-day there are 1,320. The richest man in the country fifty years ago was John Jacob Astor, credited with $25,000,000. Twenty years ago there were eight men each worth $50,000,000 or more. To-day Mr. Rockefeller is estimated to be worth well toward $1,000,000,000, with Carnegie, Morgan, and a half dozen others within speaking distance. The article adds: “These are startling facts and they have a deep significance. When one considers the earning power of money, the absorption of such aggregations seems threatening. If Mr. Rockefeller is able to earn even a net two per cent on his capital, it means an increase of $20,000,000 a year. Carry this over 1,320 millionaires in the same city, and one is staggered at the result, and wonders—first, where it is all to come from, and, secondly, at what there can be left for the teeming millions of laborers, artisans, and plain business men. This great change in the size of fortunes tells of immense activities and great prosperity, and also of the inequality and injustice of distribution. . . . It is beyond question against the interests of society that such immense fortunes should be built up. What society can do to stop it is not clear. . . . If we can justly curb the power of the predatory rich, we should do it. If we can not do it justly, we would better bear injustice.” In 1890 the Boston Globe affirmed: “Men now living can remember when there were not half a dozen millionaires in the land. There are now 4,600 millionaires.” To-day there are more than 5,000 millionaires in the United States. It has been estimated that Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Morgan each possesses about one dollar for each minute of the Christian era. A few years before his death, Mr. Gladstone declared, “There are gentlemen before me who have witnessed a greater accumulation of wealth within the period of their lives than has been seen in all preceding times since the days of Julius Cæsar.” In a late number of the Saturday Evening Post, a writer said, “Just what the combined Astor wealth now amounts to it would be hard to estimate. It is probably in the neighborhood of $300,000,000.” If 100 men could earn each $1,000 a year, they would have to work about twenty years to earn as much as the annual income of the 100 richest Americans. And it has been said that if a workman could earn $1,000 a day he would have to work until he was 560 years old, and never take a day off, before he could earn as much as many an American is worth. At the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of New York City, former Mayor Low said: “In 250 years New York has grown from a population of less than 1,500 to more than 3,500,000, has reached a real estate valuation of $3,500,000,000, in every way has attained a commercial expansion of gigantic proportions.” Only ten years ago the annual appropriations voted by the United States Congress were from $300,000,000 to $500,000,000. Now they range from $800,000,000 to $1,200,000,000. We all remember the famous first “Billion-dollar” Congress. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company now controls a capital of $900,000,000. The total annual revenue of the road approximates $160,000,000. After rivers of “water” have been squeezed out of the capital stock of the United States Steel Corporation, it still has a capital of about $1,000,000,000. Economic Rise of Pittsburg.
It was not till 1860 that the manufacture of iron was begun on a lasting basis in Pittsburg. That business venture has brought untold prosperity and fabulous wealth to that city. In 1860 the population was only 1,500. Including the suburban territory it is now about 700,000. The following facts as to the astounding industrial and financial development of Pittsburg are given by a correspondent of Harper’s Weekly. They are one of many indices of the romance of present-day finance:— There are more than 5,000 separate industrial establishments in and around Pittsburg. More than 200,000 workers are employed there. The shipments of freight last year approximated nearly 80,000,000 tons, an unheard-of record in all the world. More than 2,500,000 cars were detailed to care for this traffic. One steel-making establishment brought more iron ore into the region over its private railroad from Lake Erie than the entire traffic of three of the greatest of our transcontinental systems. The capitalization of all the industries amounts, it has been estimated by an authority, George H. Anderson, secretary of the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce, to fully $2,000,000,000. Probably $250,000,000 of finished steel a year is being produced there now, and that more than $40,000,000 is being paid to the wage-earners in that industry. It is difficult to conceive fully what this means to the town, to its banking and other interests. One can realize why it is that no less than $181,000,000 is being expended, according to an estimate made on March 22 last by the conservative Pittsburg Post, to cover a period of four years, in extending the railroad and other business enterprises of the town. The railroads are spending no less than $50,000,000 in improvements east and west of the town, and the rest is being spent largely by the steel and electrical companies in making betterments. New mill buildings, some of them nearly a quarter of a mile long, are being erected, and new machinery, to save labor and produce better products in the metal output of all kinds, is being brought in almost every day. Another writer on finance recently stated that Pittsburg nearly doubled her wealth during the years from 1896 to 1903. By far the largest actual gold reserve in the world is Russia’s “sacred fund.” It now amounts to $4,000,000,000 in value. That Russia really does possess a store of gold so vast is vouched for, writes Mr. M. J. Talbot in the Arena, May, 1901, by one of the highest attachés of the late czar, and confirmed by one of the most notable churchmen of St. Petersburg. The systematic hoarding of this fund was begun at the close of the Napoleonic wars. The fund has been growing ever since at the rate of 50,000,000 a year. A very large part of it has been derived from the rich gold mines that have been worked by the government since the beginning of the nineteenth century. But the largest part has been systematically legislated from the pockets of the people. Every subject of the czar, from the most powerful nobleman to the humblest peasant, makes a regular annual contribution to the fund. The most remarkable circumstance regarding this fund is the fact that it has never been encroached upon to the extent of a ruble. Since its inception Russia has freed the serfs at an expense of $450,000,000; she has fought the Crimean War at a tremendous outlay of gold; she has conducted her multifarious military operations in the Balkans and in the Trans-Caucasian region, at an expense of half a billion; she has constructed a railway stretching across two continents,—and yet she has never laid a finger on one cent of the “sacred fund.” Is not this fund pregnant in possibility in the building up of a world empire? What sinews and agencies of war it embodies may yet become vitally significant in the tremendous struggle now in progress in the Far East. The fund is sacredly guarded by the church. All the citations here adduced from recent economic history are given, not because of any intrinsic interest or value they may possess, but because they constitute the palpable historical fulfilment of the inspired Word, foretelling that men would, to a most extraordinary and unprecedented extent, heap “treasure together for the last days.” James 5:3. “In the last days,” Paul declared, “men shall be lovers of pleasures,” “lovers of money.” 1 Tim. 3:1–3. With what tremendous emphasis all these facts proclaim the fulfilment of those ancient and divinely-given prophecies.