GRASPING FOR GOLD by S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 28, 1903

GRASPING FOR GOLD.

By S.

The greed for gold was never so great in this world's history as it is at the present time. At least there never was a time when so much of it was manifest. The cold clink of the dollar is to many sweeter music than the rippling laughter of children, and they allow it to drown the most piteous appeals of humanity in distress. Witness the raising of the price of rice in India, China, and the Philippines while the famishing people are starving in their bare huts, wasting away from day to day in sheer starvation; and witness the increase in the cost of coal throughout the eastern States in the dead of winter, while the poor are shivering and freezing in their fireless homes. But it is the harvest time of greed, and greed fattens on the miseries of the unfortunate. Opulent avarice grasping for the last hoarded pittance of the poor, and snatching from the hands of destitute children the pennies that would have provided them with flour for bread and fire to bake it, is a sorrowful commentary on the condition of our times.

A gambling millionaire pays a jockey $10,000 a year to ride his horses, and pays his former employers $5,000 for releasing him, hoping thereby to win many times that amount through that jockey's ability to bring his horses first under the wire at the end of the race. Another gambler from a great eastern city flees to the Old World, fearing prosecution for his illegal acts, but managing to take with him $4,000,000 which his gambling institution had won for him. He pitted his greed and his ability as a gambler against the greed of his fellows and their ability in the same line. He piled up millions because so many are grasping for gold and care not how it comes.

Seven great English and German steamship companies plying between Europe and South American ports have formed themselves into a trust, similar to the great Morgan steamship trust, for the purpose of reducing expenses and raising the price of freight and passage; in other words, to increase the earning power of the capital invested; and various banking firms and railroads of this country are combining or have combined already for the same purpose. In this country almost all the railroads have raised or are planning to raise their rates and at the same time to reduce cost of operation, that the money invested may have greater power to earn more money. At the same time the cost of living is increasing in all the civilized world, because greater margins are demanded wherever capital is invested.

Something of the extent of this spirit of gold-getting may be realized when we consider the business passing through the clearing houses of London and New York in one year. The amount of business done by the London Bankers' Clearing-house for 1901 was forty-six and one-half billion dollars. The amount of business done by the New York Clearing-house for the same year was over seventy-seven billion. The figures for 1902 are not complete; but for New York they are estimated at more than ninety billion dollars. These sums are simply beyond the power of man to comprehend, and are another indication of the feverish haste of the world in the race for gold. Verily the spirit of these times is the spirit of heaping together treasure; and this spirit Inspiration points out as a sign of the last days. S.