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Show ENLIGHTENED FINANCE. H No one has attempted a defense of Smoot, but ,H the president of the club. He says he wanted him 'M because he is a leading authority on financial af- M fairs, which he has made a study. Tribune, Pitts- M burg Special. H It would be well to get the full particulars of Jl who and what the president of the Americus club H of Pittsburg is. Who b the gentleman who has 'JH found out that Apostle Smoot is an authority on '1 finance; that he has made it a profound study? M Strange, is it not, that all this should have been discovered in Pennsylvania while the Intimate 'M friends of the Apostle in Utah never dreamed of M such a thing. The most that anyone in Utah ever H gave the Apostle credit for Id the light of a finan- cier has been that, always having been an obse- lH quious slave of the Church, with full tithiug-house jH backing, he has carried on successfully some or- jl dinary business enterprises. Can it be that he has been playing a sneak on us? Is it possible M that when we all thought he was fully occupied with his woolen mill and other things, he was jl quietly absorbing all the reasoning of political Jl economists and taking in the full history of the jH world's finance and financiering from before the jH time when money was Invented? JH H Has lie gone back to that time when, by prim- H iHvo man, all things were valued by the amount 1 ( of labor necessary to produce them? When, for H instance, it required a day to run aoVvn ana kill H a deer, and like time to wash thirty grains of gold W from a stream, and so the hunter, who wanted the B gold for a nose piece for his savage sweetheart H was willing to trade meat for it, and the H primitive miner who had the gold but no venison H was willing to barter? How when the bow and B arrow were invented and a man could kill two K deer in a day venison fell in value and gold ad- H vanced? m How, later, it was discovered that while the S- , fruits of the earth quickly perished, and the fur- H nishings of early houses could be easily con- H' sumed, the yellow metal from the streams and H the white metal from the crevices in rocks re- H mained imperishable and indestructable and re- Hi tained their luster despite the abrasions of the Hk years or the action of fire and being still meas- H urea of the value of labor they were more and H more used in trade until finally some old barbar- H ian became custodian of the yellow nuggets and H the rude white bars of his tribe and for a con- B sideration loaned them and thus organized the K first bank? HH How later a tribe, weak in numbers, but rich HR in these metals, found that with them they couto Hfj hire fighters to defend them against attack from HI? moro numerous enemies, and so on, until the dis- Hfj covery was made that the metals were malleable Hh and could be cast into ingots of certain weights, H which all men would receive at a fixed value, and H so money was created and in a little while be- Mj came the ruling factor among the nations of the HTJ earth, the factor for which men would sell their 1 services and for which beauty would reserve Its VJ sweetest smiles, until finally it was discovered H2 that the abundance or non-abundance of those Hn metals gauged- exactly the world's values? Has the Apostle mastered the whole science in such a way that he is now so equipped that he is ready to go down within a few hours' ride of where J. Pierpont Morgan holds forth and discuss the science of finance? To go to the very spot where Andy Carnegie, despite of the world's sharp competition, com-petition, was able to accumulate a few dollars, and where Mr. Schwab, by hard work, succeeds in making a modest livelihood? Is the Apostle prepared to discuss finance in that atmosphere? Where did the president of that Pittsburg Am-ericus Am-ericus club discover our financial Apostle? Did Mrs Anderson come home by the way of the Pennsylvania Central and stop off to interview that president of the Amerlcus club? What is the business of that president? Has( he anything to sell? Or is he a lawyer who would make a superb su-perb resident attorney for a gigantic corporation which calls itself a Church? Or has he a wife in Pittsburg, another in Pottstown and another In Chambersburg and consequently looks upon much marriage as a holy sacrament? By the way, the directors of the Commercial club of this city must be napping. Why have they never invited the Apostle to address the club on the theme of finance? Is it fair to let all the amateur financiers of this region, such men as W. S. McCornick, Lew Hills, T. It. Jones, John E. Dooly, T. G. Webber, Web-ber, Frank Knox, Colonel Donnellan, O. J. Salisbury, Salis-bury, A. Hanauer, L. E. Burton, M. H. Walker, John Dern, E. H. Airis and plenty of others go stumbling along in their crude ways and never permit them to hear one, convenient here, who through study, practice, experience and revelation has sounded all the heights and depths of scientific scien-tific finance, and who by a simple invitation would doubtless be willing to at least toss to them some of the simpler elementary principles of the science which they in a bungling way, are administering to this community? |