INDUSTRIAL CENTERS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 13, 1904

"INDUSTRIAL CENTERS."

THERE is a popular charm about this expression that is calculated to "draw." Therefore the great "industrial centers," so-called, become the plague spots of the earth. The very suggestion calls men to a scramble for promised wealth. A thousand will aim to live and get rich on business that legitimately calls for a hundred. At such "centers" we find human nature illustrated as nowhere else. There is seen the greed, the rush, the trampling of toes, and the utter forgetfulness of nature's bounties that are more evenly distributed and in greater quantity, where there is ample room to move and breathe and be comparatively happy. The aggregations of humanity apologetically styled centers of industry usually contain a far greater percentage of non-producers, idlers, beggars, and criminals of all classes than any other habitable places on earth. The selfishness and consequent greed that characterize these crowded "business" marts has no parallel, yet they are the places that control the financial and political politics of the world. Is it any wonder there is so much fraud in the one and so much corruption in the other? The great crime trust is the most persistent manipulator of business that can be found in any of the great centers of industry. It operates seven days in the week, and twenty-four hours a day. The centering of industry carries with it the concentration of idlers and the combination of criminals, thus forming an aggregation of leeches that prey upon the "industry" of the "center." The principle was condemned at Babel, and the consequences of its persistent encouragement were illustrated in Sodom and Nineveh and Babylon.