FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
GREED AND HER PROGENY OF SIN AND CRIME.
IT has been said that no man can get money without earning it unless some other man earns money without getting it. Nothing truer could be uttered. We all know that never before were there so many men whose sole labor consisted in scheming and plotting to get something for nothing, to get their daily bread by the sweat of another's face. One of Emerson's tart epigrams yields a pertinent thought: "Every drop of man's sweat is his own. Who steals it is a thief. So sacred a being is man that whoso wrongs him robs God." How horrible the thought that one man—to fatten his own purse—should lay hands on another man, to coin his sweat and toil! But this is precisely what most men, who can, are doing. To further illustrate how the love of money inevitably issues in deeds of sin and crime, I shall first briefly tell the story of how the slaves to greed are Stealing the Public Lands.
Only a few months ago the Federal Government discovered that, during the last eight years, it had been systematically swindled out of twenty million dollars' worth of land in Oregon, California, and Arizona, alone. The vast areas that have been thus fraudulently appropriated by ravenous individuals and corporate speculators include 2,000,000 acres of the most valuable timber lands on the Pacific Coast. A Minnesota newspaper has estimated that the loss sustained by the Government, in the year 1904, was $500,000,000, as the result of the criminal appropriation of the public lands. The Government has instituted a sweeping investigation of these gigantic frauds, and, as a result, the moral sense of the nation has received a terrific shock in view of the undreamed-of magnitude of these stealings. In the words of another, "Such a mass of fraud you will find nowhere else on earth." Perhaps the most surprising and deplorable of the many black things that have been dragged into the light by this investigation, is the fact that persons of high repute, of national esteem, have been the arch conspirators in this monstrous campaign of Land Graft. Among those indicted on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the Government, are included an aged United States Senator, two Congressmen, a United States District Attorney, a half-dozen Surveyors-General, and other high Federal officials. It is now certain that eight or ten of the wealthiest and best-known land kings of California, Idaho, and Washington, will soon be hopelessly enmeshed in the legal net, by Federal indictment. In reference to large numbers of prominent men who have been robbing the Government and are now indicted, Mr. Bailey Millard writes: "It would be tiresome to give all the names; it would be a sort of roll-call of nearly all who have secured large holdings of fertile lands in Oregon and California." At any rate, the iron hand of Federal law has fallen upon the shoulders of so many high-caste robber-barons that an epidemic of terror has seized upon this province of the Kingdom of Graft. It is bewildering to contemplate the enormous tracts of land which have been unlawfully acquired by individual adventures. A well-known land magnate of California owns (?) an aggregate of 14,539,200 acres, in various parts of the Pacific States. That is a territory equal to the combined area of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. There are a score of these landed barons, each of whose estates are only a little less in extent. Many of these men stole their lands so long ago that, owing to the time-limitation of the laws, they are no longer amenable to the statutes they transgressed. It is impossible to appreciate the enormity of these villainous transactions unless we know something of the detailed iniquities involved in the schemes by which land-stealing is perpetrated. Briefly summarized, the principal methods employed are, first, swindling the Government by fraudulent surveys made on the application of fictitious persons; second, securing, by perjured testimony, title to worthless lands which are then exchanged, by an adroit system, for good land; third, the acquisition of large tracts of land by corporations or their agents, by means of "stool pigeons," or dummies, who, on perjured testimony, secure title to the land and immediately turn it over to the parties who, supply the money; fourth, by fencing of Government land by persons or corporations owning large tracts adjoining that which they fence, and which they then use to the exclusion of bona fide settlers. The third scheme has been far more extensively used than the others. Of course the dummy performs his diabolical part of the infamous business for a consideration in the form of a conscience-soothing bribe. He must perjure himself by swearing that his application is made in good faith, for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation and not for the benefit of any other person or corporation; he must swear that he is not in collusion with any person to give him the benefit of the land entered; he must swear not to make any agreement with another by which the title he acquires should inhere in whole or in part to the benefit of any person except himself. All this swearing, both before a notary and repeatedly in a court of justice, mind you, is naked perjury. Speaking of these lying affidavits—these compound, doubly-distilled perjuries—the agent of one of the largest companies of land grafters, said to Mr. Millard: "It's the regular thing. Spurious applications and affidavits are filed every day for the benefit of men who are acquiring thousands of acres. . . . Yes, it's done every day; they all do it." In thousands of these nefarious transactions, the officers of the law, through whom the transactions10were executed, knew that the whole thing was a farce. In the face of all this, we are continually exhorted by preachers and the yellow newspapers to believe that society is growing better and that the millennium of universal peace and righteousness is actually dawning! Vicious Politics of Yellow Journalism.
The ideals for which the “yellow” newspaper stands were conceived in the brain of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, editor of the New York World, twenty-three years ago. He was quick to note that the psychological moment for so radical a change in the controlling policy of a great city newspaper had come. His ability to detect this subtle fact was owing to the obvious inability of the newspapers of the old school any longer to control public opinion as they did in the halcyon days of Horace Greeley. Mr. Pulitzer avowed that his business was not only to publish a newspaper, but to SELL it. Hence he determined to publish just the kind of paper that would most effectually pander to the popular taste, not to please the people for pleasure’s sake, but to please them for the sake of their patronage. Again, we see that the motive leading to so startling an innovation was a raw commercial motive, just as we should expect in an age of rampant GREED. In submitting his unique scheme to his chief assistant, he reasoned substantially as follows: The trouble with the American people to-day is their assumed independence. They imagine they are alone in the universe. They are wealth-mad. They see it on every side of them—money and the work of money. They have created fortunes and they don’t know how to spend them. Those who have not succeeded in amassing money worship those who have, and these worshipers are in the majority. Their every thought is to become like the rich; to emulate their every act and success. It is a sensation with them; they crave sensation. To be rich is the one object of the masses in every walk of life in this country to-day. There is nothing akin to this money craze in the older countries of Europe; but in place of it they have an aristocracy. They expend their sentiment on that. Hence he reasoned that since the American people had become snobbish, he would make money by truckling to their snobbery. The people, he said, were craving an aristocracy, and hence they must have it. He would tell his readers how the nobility of wealth had become rich, how they spend their money, how they live, and what their ambitions are. He saw that the rich had become a class, and that that class was America’s counterpart of Europe’s aristocracy. He would make that fact the key-note. He declared that the “400” should be made the nucleus of the new aristocracy. A noted writer asks: “Was Joseph Pulitzer correct in his analysis of the people?” He answers his own question thus: “The public has been saying ‘yes’ every hour of every day since then, if not to him and his institutions, then to his imitators and theirs.” The dawning of the day of the yellow newspaper was the dawning of the day of the fake story. The writers for the sensational papers know that the distinctive weakness of modern society is a love for exaggeration, for the abnormal, the scandalous. They themselves confess that they deliberately misrepresent current facts; that they enlarge the most inconsequential events into matters of seemingly great moment. No scruples of conscience dare stand in the way of pandering to whatever is morbid, prurient, melodramatic, in the tastes of society. The controlling axiom of the yellow journal office is, “All the world’s a fake, and men and women merely fakers.” “The people love to be startled, shocked; and they are willing to pay for these sensations; therefore we must give them what they want, and they will give us what we want—dollars.” There you have the logic of the yellow journalist. One of the ablest writers on the staff of a leading yellow daily, recently admitted that all the romantic stories purporting to bear on the operations in the field, during our war with Spain, which appeared in those papers were “fakes” pure and simple. In his anonymous confession (in Public Opinion) the same writer says: “It is an easy task to wash a man’s reputation through a trough of printer’s ink and make it of no more worth than a cigar butt you may cast into the gutter. Yellow journalism is doing this every day. The veriest whisper of scandal against a man or woman is sufficient unto the evils of the longest columns and the blackest heads.” The persons must, of course, be of wealth or position to warrant the retailing of the whisper. It is an axiom in the yellow world that no other story is so good a story as that which tells something of bad import about a person of distinction. One of the blackest illustrations of this fiendish policy was the vile scandal that was reeked by these papers on the occasion of the murder of a public-spirited citizen of New York City, a few years ago. An obscene incident of the murder was seized upon by the yellow writers, with which to weave around the memory of the dead man one of the foulest stories that ever leaped from a wicked brain. In respect to this incident the same writer confesses: “We snatched at his name, as birds of carrion snatch at a morsel from some rotting carcass, and dragged it down to the purlieus of a fetid city. . . . We went out of our way to take some trivial incident in his career, to take some man’s recollections of a peculiar trait to justify our plan of damnation.” He says further that he could name an innocent, virtuous young woman, who is alive, and who, by the workings of the yellow system of sensationalism, suffered a wrong that can never be righted in this world. The yellow papers stopped at nothing in their awful purpose to brand this innocent woman as one of lost honor. This dark slander was fabricated to supply the people with spicy romance. That they wanted; that they would pay for. Ah, it’s all a matter of having a fat balance on the right side of the ledger! I dare not further illustrate the atrocious maxims of the yellow press. It is regrettable to think that society not only tolerates, but fosters, such enormous evils. The public is chiefly to blame. That the people give their fealty to these journals is proved by the free, unstinted support they give them. The same unhealthy, vicious tastes prevail among country folk. They too demand “Spanish dishes” in their mental bill of fare. Hence the melancholy fact stares us in the face, that in the small cities, and in the villages and towns, are found all the accessories of the yellow system. “We need the money, and hence we must give our readers what they are willing to pay for,” say the village editors, in justification of their base truckling. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Extortion by Manipulating Stocks.
Referring to the making of great trust corporations Mr. Lawson writes: Into the rigging and launching of almost every big financial operation in the United States during the last twenty years, double-dealing, sharp practice, and jobbery have entered; and, what is more, the men interested have participated in and profited thereby. To correct a popular fallacy I want to say that I am not referring here simply to moral derelictions, but to actual legal crimes. If the details of the great reorganization and trustification deals put through since 1885 could be laid bare, eight out of ten of our most successful stock-jobbing financiers would be in a fair way to get into state or federal prisons. The principal species of “sharp-dealing” and “jobbery,” which has entered into the equipping and launching of the great industrial corporations, in recent years is the iniquitous practise of issuing vast blocks of “watered” stock. By watered stock is meant stock not based upon actual capital or value, and hence often called inflated capital. The reader will recall that during the years 1899 to 1902 this country was “trust mad.” A veritable mania for creating and launching Titanic corporations, largely on inflated capital, seized upon our people. The capitalization represented by the monster trusts conceived during those years, actual and watered, aggregated many billions of dollars. Even so conservative a financier as Mr. Henry Clews, president of one of the strongest New York banks, tells the readers of the Cosmopolitan Magazine that the obvious purpose of the promoters of these trust companies, in issuing hundreds of millions of stocks based on nothing but wind and water, was, first, to sell as much of it as possible to the unsuspecting and “confiding” public, and by that means loot the “dear people” to the tune of upwards of a billion dollars. The editor of the Arena wrote last February: “Certain coteries [of capitalists] are acquiring millions of unearned money through inflation or stock-watering and through gambling with loaded dice.” A concrete illustration will serve to make clear how this modern system of rapine and pillage is carried out by the “respectable,” and often “pious,” votaries of “high finance.” Mr. Lawson has graphically described the methods by which a few millionaire gamblers in stocks fleeced the public of many millions by manipulating Amalgamated Copper. These modern robber-barons secured the copper properties that made up what is known as Amalgamated at a cost of $39,000,000. This they immediately capitalized for $75,000,000, or $36,000,000 above its cost and actual value. In this way the public were led to believe that a property which was worth $39,000,000 had an actual value of $75,000,000, being wholly ignorant of the fact that $36,000,000 was a fictitious creation. The next step necessary to success in this predatory enterprise was to inflame the public imagination and stimulate the passion for dollars by exhibiting pictures of vast fortunes to be won by getting possession of this stock, which was described as representing enormously-rich properties. And now followed that game so thoroughly mastered by the giant gamblers of Wall Street, who always play with loaded dice. In the parlance of the stock-market the game is known as “washing” stock. It is simply a fake auction on a big scale. Having a lot of watered stock which they desire to unload on the investing public,11at a handsome price, these manipulators (the great millionaires whose names we hear every day) enter the arena and begin to bid against each other until the price is pushed up to a high figure. They pretend, of course, that it is a legitimate transaction, yet, all the while, it is a fake procedure pure and simple, for the express purpose of creating the impression in the minds of the “outsiders” that the stock is of exceptional value. Then the poor, gullible creatures, in good faith, begin to bid, and it is not long until the worthless stuff is handed out to the dupes in exchange for millions of good money. It was thus, through the magic of this little game, that a few of the Masters of Standard Oil traded off the fictitiously-created stock of Amalgamated Copper for $36,000,000 of the people’s gold. And this instance is purely typical of the methods by which, during the one year of 1901, hundreds of thousands of families were plundered of all they had. Through this consummate game of false pretense, of wretched, wholesale faking, the American people were wheedled into handing over to a handful of Wall Street bandits nearly two billion dollars worth of hard-earned property, in less than three years. And even today the Wall Street merry-go-round still gyrates. The following excerpt from the Saturday Evening Post contains a most pertinent thought in this connection: Many are coming forward and announcing in their deepest chest tones that they purpose to abolish what is popularly called “frenzied finance.” And each gets a hearty round of cheers. But “frenzied finance” goes on unabolished. The reason is that it, like so many of our great national “problems” is a “local issue.” It is local to each individual who has had the industry to accumulate money for investment. Every man can abolish “frenzied finance” for himself—and that is the matter of prime importance to him. The way to abolish it is simple—don’t invest your hard-earned money in Wall Street wind. This thought is good as far as it goes; but the writer does not reach the root of the trouble. To abolish “frenzied finance” it is necessary first to banish avarice from the individual heart. This can be done by nothing less than the power of the Gospel, which “is the power of God unto salvation” from sin; and greed is a glaring form of sin. Doubtless we have all remarked that it is scarcely possible to pick up a current newspaper or magazine, without our eyes catching something of this sort: “This is an age of dollars, big and senseless.” “Dollars run things in these days.” “Ours is an age of unmatched greed,” and so on. Yes, so often have the changes been rung on this obvious truth, that to repeat it is to lay oneself open to a charge of uttering platitudes. Perhaps some of us have not only apprehended the truth of these trite sayings, but by painful personal experience, have felt their truth. This wealth-lust has become a disease, acute,—and chronic, too. Our knowledge and experience, however, only confirm the prophetic verdict of Holy Writ. Clear as the white light of the noonday sun is the following inspired foretelling respecting the religion of money which so despotically dominates humanity in these stressful and crucial last days. Note how sharp and clear it rings: “But know this, that IN THE LAST DAYS grievous times shall come.” Why—“FOR men shall be lovers of self, LOVERS OF MONEY.” How wonderfully exact and full is the fulfilment of this startlingly laconic prophecy, in these very days in which you and I live, dear reader! We see, then, that to-day men’s hearts fairly pant for riches, and that God foresaw and foretold this terribly-sad truth. But what is supremely important to us is to recognize the fact that God revealed this truth for the express purpose of enabling us to know that we are actually living “in the last days”—in the days when the Son of man is about “to be revealed.” Ah, it was in the spirit of “everlasting kindness” that He condescended to inform us of this solemn truth. In every age, God would have the people live in the full blaze of the prophetic light that shines for that age. “Surely the Lord Jehovah will do nothing, except He reveal His secret unto His servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. In respect to the day of the coming of Christ, the Holy Spirit bears repeated testimony that the “children of the kingdom” would know, at the appropriate time, that that day is near. He has graciously revealed the tokens, the signs by which they not only can know, but ought to know the time of the approaching of that momentous day. And one of the most marked and conspicuous of those many signs is that men would “be lovers of money,” and would, accordingly, heap up treasures “in the last days.” Shall we not with David pray: “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold” the manifold tokens of the imminence of “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God”? [The next article in the series will be, “In the Lap of Luxury.”]