The Game for Money by T.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 10, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 28.

The Game for Money.

By T.

SINCE the great earthquake on the Pacific Coast last year there has been much difficulty experienced in getting freight shipments delivered. At first the people took the situation in a matter-of-fact sort of way, thinking that as soon as "things settle down to their normal state" there will be no further difficulty. But it has been a year and almost three months since the earthquake and fire in San Francisco, and the difficulties in securing prompt transportation are practically as great now as they were a year ago.

At first there was a great effort that seemed patriotic and unselfish to relieve the distress and to restore normal conditions. But it soon developed that men would pay extra prices in order to get things in a hurry, and then instead of an effort to relieve the abnormal conditions there comes a general scramble thru the artifices of bribes and grafting to get hold of all the money that could be extorted and keep out of jail, and some have not been successful in evading the prison. This latter fact is the only hopeful omen in the situation.

The grafting in freight shipments was induced by some of the wealthy shippers keeping agents at certain transfer points to pay the freight men for putting their cars ahead. The reports say that $50.00 a car was an ordinary price of getting them moved out of the congested yards promptly. And, with the abnormal prices that were reigning on the Coast, the big shipper could afford to pay this extra fee or graft in order to have his goods put on the preferred list and passed on.

As this grafting is found out and exposed the railroad officials claim that they have no knowledge of it, and that they will do all they can to stop it. But no sooner is this matter taken up than another complaint is made by inference, if not openly, that the railroads themselves are delaying freights in order to make it necessary for people to ship by express. The railroads are the principal stockholders in the express companies, and since they can equip special express trains about as easily as they can equip freight trains, and since the express charges are nearly five times as great as the freight rate there is an immense extra profit.

The Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco has just sent an appeal to the President at Washington to relieve the Pacific Coast from this congested freight condition by increasing the facilities of the Panama Railway, and extending the service of merchant ships along the coast of the Atlantic and the Pacific. And this appeal is couched in such language as to make it almost necessary to infer that the leading business men of that city are of the opinion that the railroads are conniving in the freight hold-ups.

The foregoing statements are merely facts of current history. Nobody denies them. These facts show that the men of this time have the machinery of the country in such shape that they can extort money from their fellow men, and that they are not backward about doing it. The men who are engaged in this extortion are not considering their fellow men; they are thinking only of how they can increase their own gains. The inconveniences, the losses, and even the financial ruin of some of their fellows is not the thing that they are taking into account.

What they are studying is the question of getting money, regardless of how much the rights of another are invaded or trampled upon.

The men who are doing these things tell us that the world is growing better; they tell us that this is the time of great civilization and enlightenment, and consequently the great manifestation of the "brotherhood of man." But the one who is viewing conditions as they exist can not fail to see that the facts belie the assumptions of such highly refined civilization and morality.

One passage of inspiration makes the meaning of these conditions plain. It reads: "Know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, without self control, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof; from these also turn away." 2 Tim. 3: 1-5. These scripture statements show that self-love and love of money are among the things that make the last days perilous. The self-love and the love of money shown in this time is causing many of the strongest and wisest men to anxiously ask what will be the outcome of it all. For the self-love and the money-love of this generation have built up a system of robbery that can keep within the law and yet extort and wring money out of the people in ways that ought to make the ordinary highwayman, the bank robber, or the train wrecking bandits to consider themselves as not yet beyond the kindergarten degrees of the school of criminality.

There is a turbulent, unsettled condition in the world to-day, and if you will take the time to step aside from the maddening whirl to analyze the situation you will readily see that the disposition to get money in large sums, regardless of how it is obtained, is at the basis of much of our social disease. God saw this thousands of years ago, and told us what it would mean. He has told us that it would mean peril, and He has also said it would mean the "last days." The only hope before the world now is that the "last days" are truly here, and that soon the God of heaven will strike down this powerful mass of evil with His omnipotent power of destruction.

Men may hold theories in regard to the situation, but the prophetic truths of inspiration are the one thing that casts a brilliant light above the mass of gloom. Those who will take the pains to look up may see clearly.