The Mania for Gold by B. M. Grandy

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 22, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 33.

The Mania for Gold

By B. M. Grandy

A World Phenomenon That Will Intensify

"Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days." James 5: 3.

By B. M. GRANDY

THE last days have come. Some one has heaped treasure together. Not the dwellers in the crowded tenements in the cities of the world, where mothers and half-clad children toil making cheap garments and other small articles of commerce.

Not the army of shop girls, shamefully underpaid and overworked. Discouraged and tempted, many fall easy victims to preying, licentious men, and, in order that their bodies may be clad according to fashion, are led to sell their souls for a mess of pottage.

Not the army of factory hands — men, women, boys, and girls — who, for the bare necessities of life, work long hours. Sad, but true, too often even part of the insufficient income goes to buy drink, tobacco, demoralizing amusement, and other things that sap the strength of the world’s workers.

Not even the more contented and better situated tillers of the soil are “heaping together” more treasure than is sufficient to clothe and care for them and their families properly.

As we go over the list of workers engaged in the various branches of industry, some poorly and some well paid, we do not find among them the class of whom the apostle speaks as heaping up treasure.

No; he says, “Go to now, ye rich men” — men with untold and fabulous wealth; men who loll in voluptuousness and wanton, extravagant pleasure; the unscrupulous, the greedy, and the grasping ones; pirates on the sea of commerce, heaping together treasure “for the last days.” Like the fabled treasure of Captain Kidd, rusting in a cave in some lost island, so rusts the hoarded treasure of many a modern captain of high and frenzied finance, whose income is so vast that the greatest problem of the possessor is, to keep his heaps of gold reinvested.

Portentous omens foretell the coming miseries of the godless, unhappy rich who tenaciously hoard the sordid treasures of the earth, with no time to think of the treasures of eternity. “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.” James 5: 4. The lawful hire of the laborer, withheld that the heaps of gold and silver may swell, that the stock and the bonds may multiply, will become mountains of evidence against the possessors.

With a daily increase of wealth in the United States alone, for the first four years of the present century, of $13,000,000, and with the wealth of the country aggregating, in 1912, over $150,000,000,000, which is an average of $1,500 for every man, woman, and child in the nation, it seems there should be enough for all.

While America is among the richest of nations, yet the whole world has enjoyed a great increase of wealth in the last few decades. Millionaires have multiplied remarkably, the multimillionaires are with us in added numbers, and even the billionaire is not unknown. The fortune of one billion would represent the individual shares of 666,666 people, if the nation’s wealth were equally divided. Therefore, as the multimillionaires increase, so also must the pauper class. The multimillionaire, with the power of great wealth, continues to add to his treasure, at the expense of the poorer classes.

There is a comparatively small group of men in this country who can stop practically every wheel on the railroads, close the doors of most of our factories, lock the switches on our telegraph lines, and shut down all the coal and iron mines in the United States. They can do this because they control, to a large extent, the money which this country produces. The control of the money gives its possessors tremendous power over a nation’s industries. Senator Ingalls, when in Congress, truly said, “This concentration of wealth is the most appalling fact in history.”

The concentration of wealth affects not only the financial world, but the social, the political, and in fact every phase of human economy. Strikes become more serious and widespread, boycotts multiply, and anarchy and general lawlessness flourish.

The fact that social unrest is so prevalent is an evidence that the control of wealth by the few is not satisfactory to the many. If dissatisfaction were all that is bred thereby, the case

would not be so serious, for dissatisfaction is the heritage of all who have not found the peace of God; but dissatisfaction breeds envy, hatred, malice, and resentment, on the part of the oppressed and downtrodden. Murders, hired assassinations, dynamitings, and a general increase of crime are easily traceable to the social unrest.

Recourse to Violence

MANY reason this way: "Our laws are failing to protect the weak, our courts yield to the corrupting power of wealth. All else failing, why should we not take the direct action route, and by force of arms, right conditions that are so palpably wrong?"

The history of the French Revolution portrays the result of such a course.

Wronged though you may be, listen, friend, to the words of unfailing wisdom: "Recompense to no man evil for evil. . . . Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." Rom. 12: 17, 19. "For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits." James 3: 16, 17.

The acute industrial situation is worldwide, and presages the dissolution of the governments of the earth. The conditions are similar to those which preceded the fall of the great empires of the past. Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, each crumbled in decay when the wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few, and the masses were reduced to a state bordering on vassalage.

The Only Remedy

THE conditions are yearly growing graver and more complicated. Taken in conjunction with other conditions pointed out in the word of God, the industrial situation is but an added token that the dissolution of all things earthly is at hand.

Confederacies are an indication of selfishness and distrust in the hearts of men, and are calculated to compel others to favor certain combinations because of their power. They are especially prevalent in these last days. But futile are their attempts to right conditions, because the hearts of men are fixed to do evil. Sin raises its sinister head in every walk of life. And the only remedy for sin is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The world seeks help everywhere but here. Yet not altogether; for some there are who find the antidote for sin, and apply it to their troubled souls.

These will heed the admonition of the prophet Isaiah, applying especially to the times when God's people await the Lord's return, and will not see in these confederacies the deliverance promised; but their hope is in that sure deliverance soon to come. See Isa. 8: 12-17.

The final adjustment, not only of the industrial troubles, but of all difficulties that harass mankind, is at hand. Surely God's people in this time should be found heeding the Word when it says: "Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh." James 5: 7, 8. The same Lord that marks the sparrow's fall, takes note of the direful oppression of humanity throughout the earth. He alone can right the wrongs that will exist at His coming. With this great event will be ushered in that eternal period of peace when the truth of every declaration of God's word pertaining to righteousness will be unquestionably vindicated.