“WHERE WEALTH ACCUMULATES.”
The poet Goldsmith writes in his “Deserted Village:” — “Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.” Every nation once prosperous has followed the same downward road. With prosperity came wealth, luxurious living, desire for more gain, commercial corruption, the lowering of conscience, the loss of business integrity, and the ruin of the State. Great examples of this course may be seen in Babylon and Rome. The destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jewish nation was preceded by just such conditions against which God warns all future nations and ages. Listen to the words of only one of His prophets:— “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape-gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat; my soul desired the first-ripe fruit. The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men; they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net. That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up. The best of them is as a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now shall be their perplexity.” Micah 7: 1-4. And that is the condition in this land to-day. Corruption is everywhere. The land teems with fraud. Business integrity is a scarce article. It has no place in the buy and sell of the world’s market. Just one instance of this. This government has an Interstate Commerce Commission for the purpose of regulating the internal commerce of the country, equalizing railway rates, preventing injustice to the interior and small dealers, etc. Yet from the very beginning the commission has found its way blocked, and the laws of the land transgressed by various companies composed of men of national and international reputation. At the present time the industries of production and manufacture are in the hands of a very few houses which act in conjunction with the railways. To stop these illegal relations seems to be beyond the power of the government, for its agent, the Interstate Commerce Commission, tells us that it has little or nothing to propose. Of the transportation of packing-house products, and grain and grain products, the commission says:— That the leading traffic officials of many of the principal railway lines, men occupying high positions and charged with the most important duties, should deliberately violate the statute law of the land, and in some cases agree with each other to do so; that it should be thought by them necessary to destroy vouchers, and so to manipulate book-keeping as to obliterate every evidence of the transactions; that hundreds of thousands of dollars should be paid in unlawful rebates to a few great packing-houses; that the business of railroad transportation should to such an extent be conducted in open disregard of law, must be surprising and offensive to all right-minded persons. The effect is to give them [the packing-houses] an enormous advantage over smaller competitors located at other points. Already these competitors have mostly ceased to exist. These disclosures afford a pregnant illustration of the manner in which secret rate concessions are tending to build up great trusts and monopolies at the expense of the small independent operator. The different lines, in an effort to obtain a share of the grain transportation business, deem it necessary to drive out of business the small buyer, and to operate their business through a single large concern. One effect of this is to put the miller out of the market as an independent buyer. This is but one of many evidences. As of Judea of old, so of this nation, “The day of thy watchmen and thy visitation [of wrath] cometh; now shall be their perplexity.” An insincere optimism will not save a nation where such things rule. Neither will the use of ill-gotten gain in building or endowing eleemosynary or educational institutions. Neither will a profession of religion, individually or nationally. God demands a living faith issuing in the keeping of the commandments of God. Rev. 14:6-14.