"Troublous Times Shall Come"
By Editor
In the Springfield Union of July 31, Mr. Rudolph Spreckles is quoted as follows regarding an early financial crisis in this country: "The financial control of the country is to-day centered in the hands of two great interests. When the two men in control of these interests engage in battle with each other for the supremacy, a revolution, the most destructive the world has ever seen, will follow—a revolution that will not only paralyze or wreck many of our great industries, and overthrow unnumbered financial institutions, but will imperil the safety of the Government itself. "I have been engaged in business since I was seventeen, and have noticed year by year a gradual reduction in the number of firms handling large industries or engaged in banking, until to-day the reduction must excite alarm. It is a significant commentary on business conditions, that two men have it in their power to embarrass the United States Government. The concentration of wealth is the great evil of modern times, for it places in a few hands the power to precipitate panics and control legislation. "Each time one of these panics has occurred, certain interests have come forward to relieve the situation by the releasing of large amounts of money. If men can break a panic by bringing forward their hoarded millions, it is evident they can cause a panic by withdrawing from circulation a few hundred millions of dollars." Mr. Spreckles then gives his view as to the remedy for corrupt financial conditions, which he asserts he is doing all in his power to reform, by adding: "What is needed to-day is a quickening of conscience of the great wealth holders. One trouble with the trusts is that the men whose capital is invested in them are not sufficiently concerned to take an active interest to their management. So long as they continue to receive large dividends they wink at practises in a corporation that they would not countenance in their own personal business." We agree with Mr. Spreckles that the only human remedy of these evils is the quickening of the conscience of great wealth holders. But this is not a mechanical or political matter. Noble men are doing all that humans can in politics and out, but conditions grow worse. "The quickening of the conscience" can only come through right attitude to the great moral law as revealed in God's Word, to the Gospel of Christ, in the reception of the Holy Spirit. But the Scriptures reveal that human hearts, surfeited with the greed of gain, will reject the pleadings of the Spirit, refuse to recognize the obligation to moral law, and fail to reconcile their hearts to God. In the face of such stubborn rebellion against divine requirements, the prophetic Word tells us "perilous times shall come." Men will be "covetous," "lovers of money." See 2 Tim. 3.1-5. Already the prophecy is fulfilling, and until men's hearts are changed their existence will make impossible prosperous times. Indications do not point toward repentance on the part of the majority.