FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By Prof. George W. Rine
MARVELOUS FECUNDITY OF THE MODERN DOLLAR.
IN 1848, the first John Jacob Astor died, leaving a fortune of $20,000,000. When, in 1876, his son and heir, W. B. Astor, died, the Astor wealth had grown to $100,000,000. By 1890, competent authorities placed it at $250,000,000. The total Astor holdings now, writes Mr. Burton J. Hendrick in McClure's Magazine, for April, amount to at least $450,000,000. "In fifteen or twenty years," he continues, "at the present rate of progress, it [Astor fortune] will have reached the billion mark. And then it will go even faster, until the ordinary mind is appalled at the portentous figures. We have seen that the $2,500,000 invested by John Jacob has multiplied at least two hundred times in one hundred years. If the same rate be maintained for another century, the Astor fortune will attain the unimaginable total of eighty billions. We stand aghast at such a possibility; but not more so than would have John Jacob's contemporaries had they foreseen the present reality. In 1830, John Jacob Astor was the only man in New York who was worth a million dollars." In 1890, the American Tobacco Company—popularly known as the tobacco trust—began business with a capital of $25,000,000. At first its operations extended over a limited territory. This notoriously unconscionable trust has rapidly expanded in both scope and capitalization, until to-day its business amounts to a virtual monopoly of all lines of tobacco production and distribution, and its operations extend throughout the entire civilized world. Its capitalization has, in only fifteen years, jumped from a paltry $25,000,000 to the prodigious total of $575,000,000. At its inception the trust controlled only eight plants. In 1904, it had acquired exclusive control of 160 plants. It dominates ninety per cent. of the colossal tobacco production and trade of the United States, and sixty of that in all other parts of the world. The amazing growth of wealth in these romantic days is strikingly illustrated by the phenomenal development of the banking institutions of Pittsburg during the past fifteen years. In 1890, the city had but forty banking houses, including national and State banks and trust companies, with a total capital of $15,200,000, and total resources of $97,150,000. In 1903, the number of banks had increased to ninety-five, with a capital of $60,000,000, and with the total resources standing at the bewildering figure of $420,000,000. The bank clearings for 1903 further illustrate the gigantic strides taken; the figures of 1890 amounting to $786,157,000, while in 1903 they leaped to the towering height of $2,356,875,350. This prodigious evolution of Pittsburg's economic side only serves to exemplify the wondrous growth of the wealth of all the world's centers of trade, during the past few years. An Unobtrusive, but Most Significant Incident.
The gigantic magnitude of every-day incidents in the industrial and monetary world of to-day is startlingly illustrated by the following bit of narrative clipped from a late number of The Saturday Evening Post. Such an incident is possible only in an age of super-abounding wealth. Here it is: Soon after the new year began, an interesting business announcement appeared in the newspapers. It filled only a small bit of space apportioned to the latest news sensation; it was an almost insignificant item compared with the war news; it got few large headlines. And yet it was a stupendous thing. President Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, contracted with President Converse, of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, for 325 locomotives at $17,000 each. This meant a total of $5,525,000. The stipulation was that all the locomotives—each a mechanical wonder in itself—should be delivered by the end of June, or at the rate of fifty per month, practically two complete locomotives for every working day. Take the financial significance of this. Mulhall computes the total amount of money in circulation, including coined money or its equivalent, but not securities of various sorts, at about $11,010,000,000, or just a little more than seven dollars and a half per capita, if it were divided equally among all the people in the world. So for his extra motive power, a mere six months' purchase, President Cassatt takes the equivalent of the per capita money of nearly a million people of the earth. And this is but an incident in the operations of the great corporation which he directs. . . . It is difficult, even by a stretch of fancy, to appreciate properly the gigantic achievements of modern industry. The complexity of an equipment that can produce two locomotives for every working day, and of the agency whose increased business needs these engines, almost appals the understanding, and yet so well handled and so completely adjusted are all the details that the system is practically automatic. Thus the head of a transportation army meets the head of a manufacturing army, expresses his needs, agrees to pay the price, and knows that his order will be filled on schedule time. "In wonder," said Coleridge, "all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace." The wonder-shop of the age is the American factory. Scramble for Opportunity to Invest Their Hoards.
"Prosperity, unexampled and unparalleled, is reported from every section of the United States," alleges the Philadelphia Ledger of recent date. Capital is everywhere greedily snatching up every opportunity for profitable investment. So abundant is capital that its masters jostle one another in a wild rush to discover and create means for its profitable employment. The great Japanese loan of $200,000,000 was floated in Wall Street in the first two business hours of one morning. The bonds representing these millions "were absorbed as a sponge does water," adds the Ledger. The announcement of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company of its issuance of $100,000,000 in bonds created not even a ripple on the placid lake of finance. They were instantly subscribed for by the money princes with greedy impatience. The Ledger significantly adds: "Such ventures a few years ago would have stunned and appalled the financiers." The fact is that the world's money supply has attained to so prodigious a magnitude that mammoth loans like these are made with the easy facility of ordinary every-day transactions. But I must resist the well-nigh overmastering temptation to adduce additional facts and figures illustrative of my thesis. Be assured that I have not marshalled the foregoing statistics and incidents for their own sake, absorbing as such a task might be. Did it ever occur to you, dear reader, that this universally discussed phenomenon—the momentous evolution of wealth in recent years—might be a subject of inspired prophecy? Such it is, however. Read the first nine verses of the fifth chapter of the epistle by James. This prophecy, bearing upon economic interests, contains in itself the repeated evidence that it would find its realization and fulfilment "in the last days"—in the days when "the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." The Holy Spirit here foretells the fact, so notoriously patent to all, that in these days, "the last days," the "rich men" will have "heaped up riches." Is not the evidence of the fulfilment of this last-day prophecy, in our generation, overwhelmingly conclusive? This, of course, is only one of scores of prophetic proofs that our Lord is about to fulfil His promise, made to His disciples just before His ascension, "I will come again." In holy vision, the prophet Isaiah likewise foresaw and foretold that unprecedented riches would conspicuously characterize the closing years of time. The second and twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Isaiah show the chapter to be a prophecy looking to the end of time. Now note the vivid prediction that the prophecy utters in reference to the same present-day phenomenon: "Their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures." Could the actual financial status of our day be more trenchantly and succinctly expressed? If this inspired foretelling is not fulfilled in the sight of all the people to-day, then no prophecy can be fulfilled. Shall we not praise and adore the Author of prophecy, that He has not left us in darkness, but has graciously condescended to reveal to us the infinitely important meaning of the marvels of these crowning years of time? [The next article in this series will be "Tyranny of Combined Millions."]