A Warning to Capital

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 18, 1916

A Warning to Capital

B. C. FORBES, an editorial writer in the San Francisco Examiner, had a column recently on the subject of profit sharing. He advises the capitalist to consider seriously the dividing of profits with the common laborer, as well as with the stock-holding officer. Among other things, he says:

"We are entering a new era of democracy. The European war will alter the whole status of government, of capital and labor. Dynasties are doomed. We are to witness a changed order. The 'common people' are to rise up in their might, and take a stronger hand in running things. It behooves capital in this country to bestir itself to remove every reasonable cause for complaint on the part of the rank and file."

There is, indeed, a growing and more pronounced complaint, not only in this country, but in all the world, against the capital class. The capitalist of this time has difficulties just ahead of him which will eclipse anything the world has yet seen.

Speaking to the capitalist class who live in the last days, the apostle James earnestly exclaims, "Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." And in view of this defrauding of the laborer, the prophet-apostle points the rich man to the result that will follow. He is bidden: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days."

Nothing could be clearer or more striking than this Scripture text. According to its plain statement, the rich men "have heaped treasure together for the last days." They have done this fraudulently, by oppressing the laborer; and God has forewarned them that they will "weep and howl" for their "miseries" as the result of it.

It is well that men stand under the light of prophecy as they face the conditions that confront the world; otherwise they may sink in despair as they contemplate the spirit of revolution that is breaking out everywhere among the laborers, and rapidly growing more intense.