“SUDDEN DESTRUCTION COMETH . . . AS TRAVAIL UPON A WOMAN WITH CHILD.”
By P. T. Magan
During the past four years there has broken upon these United States an ever-rising tide of love and lust for money and for money making. With a steady swell, and never an ebb, it has flooded the land from the rock-bound coast of Maine, across the continent for full three thousand miles, to where the Pacific once marked the western boundary of this nation. Marvelous have been the transformations wrought during the four eventful years last gone by. The old America of which Tocqueville, the great French philosopher, wrote, where he describes “a jealousy of wealth which compelled rich men, like the Jews of the Middle Ages, to abstain from all the ostentation of luxury,”—this old America has gone, gone, never to return. That old ideal for this great land, that it should be a country without pauperism and without great wealth, is to-day only a broken memory bedewed with the tears of those who have prayed that the purity of the Pilgrims might adorn this age also. During the past four weeks the din of battle and strife for filthy lucre has grown into a deafening and horrible roar. A craze, a frenzy, a very madness, has laid hold upon men. Gold, gold, gold, has been the sound which has fairly hissed from hundreds and thousands of throats. During the last few weeks the gambling in stocks on the exchanges in New York and Chicago has beggared description. Railroad shares, which normally sell for forty, fifty, or seventy-five dollars apiece, have jumped up as high as one hundred and fifty, two hundred, and beyond. It was gambling, nothing but gambling. No one entertained an idea that the earning power of the roads was capable of any substantial increase. There was nothing to warrant the idea that the Western railroads could in the immediate future pay greater dividends than heretofore. Reckless men and women of both large and small fortunes invested their money. Feverishly they have watched the ever-increasing market value of their holdings. The real cause for these phenomenal rises in certain railroad shares is now known. A bitter fight between two factions of multi-millionaires for the mastery of the railroad situation has been in progress. Each side was determined to gain control, consequently they bid and gambled against each other. Men had sold stock for future delivery; that stock had been “cornered.” A few men bid it up and up, and held it where these others had to pay fabulous prices to obtain it. At last, Thursday, May 9, the climax and a panic, the greatest in the history of the country, occurred. Wise men had predicted that it would come, but the majority had laughed them to scorn. The shares of one railroad worth only one hundred dollars at par, were bid up to one thousand dollars a share, an advance of eight hundred and thirty dollars a share in two hours. Special trains were hired to travel at lightning speed to bring blocks of stock to the market.346 But the great strain had gone to the limit, and a terrific break came like a thunderclap. It was the wildest panic ever known. Paper fortunes were wiped out, some substantial ones were impaired, and the money matters of the greatest financial center were thrown into a confused and tangled wreck. “It was a millionaires’ panic, but, as usual, the small operators were the real sufferers. But apart from the losers, large and small, there is a deep-seated feeling of anger on the part of the respectable financial community against the men who have engineered the corner regardless of consequences, which are beyond the power of words to express. “That any set of men, to gratify their own selfish purposes, should run a stock up by means of a corner to exorbitant prices, and thus deliberately wreck a market, . . . is denounced on all sides as nothing less than knavery.” “When Northern Pacific common shares touched one thousand dollars, an old stockbroker exclaimed: ‘That is nothing less than cold-blooded murder!’ “On all sides among non-speculative business men, the exploiting of the present market in this buccaneering way, was described as piracy and highway robbery.” So great was the break and the panic, that men verily fought with one another like wild beasts of prey, in their anxiety to “unload” their holdings. As the stock market came tumbling down, the hideous and frenzied cry of “Get out from under” resounded on every side. From $1,000 a share the stock of the Northern Pacific Railroad dropped to $160 a share. Even the stock of the Standard Oil Company, itself the mother of all the trusts, fell from $821 a share to $650 a share, a break of $171. This represents $171,000,000 off what has been the market value of the Standard Oil Company’s outstanding stock. It was the worst panic that Wall Street ever saw. For a while there was seemingly no bottom this side of zero to stock-market prices. Stocks were offered for sale at almost any price they would bring, and under the immense mass of forced liquidations sales, the market crumbled away in every direction. In their frenzy and despair, men sought to borrow money in order to tide them over this bad time. Then the greed of the money loaners began to show itself, and instead of asking from four to six per cent as is customary, the rate went up to sixty per cent. The losses of speculators caught in this panic on this one day are estimated at $500,000,000. In commenting upon this fearful episode in the financial history of the United States, the New York Press very pertinently remarks:— “A vast sum of the country’s working capital has been diverted from its proper uses to stock-gambling for months past. How far this has gone, we shall not know even when the returns come in of country bankers going to Alaska, and country merchants into bankruptcy. Throughout the whole land thousands of men will be crippled financially and psychologically; even where they do not come to ruin, as a result of this great debauch. Thus just so much of our national energy is lost. And he is a shallow observer who has not realized in such losses one of the causes of our periodical terms of long-continued and absolute prostration. Sprees like this one—now, we hope, ending—undermine the system of each American generation, and leave it an easy prey to ills which in its normal state it would with ease repel.” The next day everything seemed to improve, and the market steadied down again. Everywhere people began congratulating themselves on this “remarkable recovery.” It was so rapid, and in many ways so complete, that it became a subject of favorable comment everywhere. Under the steadying of market values, men who the day before had acted like frenzied demons, became not only calm, but even pleasant and hopeful. The scenes of the previous day were like a hideous nightmare, but they were soon forgotten. Soon the speculators were going upon their way, gambling as recklessly as if nothing had ever happened. If there were no other sign that the Spirit of God is deserting the earth, this feverish desire to make money, and to make it fast, to make it, no matter what knave and robber methods are employed in doing so, is in itself a sign of the strongest and the plainest kind. When men will literally fight like wild beasts in order to obtain an opportunity to execute a buying or selling order in which vast losses or gains are involved, the thirst for wealth can not be much more pronounced. When a handful of men will deliberately plan to bring about a situation which will enable them in two hours to gather to themselves fortunes which it has taken their competitors years to amass; when some will thus deliberately plot to wrest from others in a mere moment of time the fruits of ten, twenty, or thirty years of toil,—when all this is so, has not mankind reached a point of depravity difficult of description? When the Master himself was describing the scenes which would take place just prior to His coming, He used these words: “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.” Now troubles in the money matters of the world have already begun. These are said to be “the beginnings of sorrows.” In the margin of the text there is this note concerning the word translated “sorrows”: “The word in the original importeth the pains of a woman in travail.” It is the same word as appears in 1 Thess. 5:3: “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” Many times in the Bible the figure of the travail of a woman with child is used to describe the troubles of the last days. These troubles are described as coming as travail comes upon one with child. God used this figure because it is the only one in all the Word which accurately portrays the manner of the coming of these troubles and of the end of the world. How, then, come the pains of travail? Is there one steady siege of suffering till the end of death or deliverance is reached? There is a time of intense suffering followed by a time of ease and rest, followed by another period of suffering, followed by another period of rest, and thus till deliverance or death takes place. So it is and will be with the troubles of these last days. There will be times of great financial distress. Times when the faces of strong men blanch before the ruin which stares them in the face. “For thus saith the Lord: We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?” But these pains of travail will be short. After them will come times of ease, prosperity, and plenty. But these, in turn, will again be followed by times of greater financial depression and distress. Thus it will be until the end. Is it not therefore meet for the remnant Church to bear in mind that prosperous times are not given them in order that they may continue to wrap up their God-intrusted means in the enterprises of earth; but rather as a warning that hard times are coming, and that God has given prosperity that the remnant people may have an opportunity to cut down their worldly possessions, and lay their offerings upon the altar of the King who is so soon to come? While the world is madly striving to get, let the loyal remnant sacredly strive to give in order that the blessed cause and work may prosper in the earth,—the cause of Him who says that He loves the cheerful giver.