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Show UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION. Fifty years since we had but two or three millionaries m this country. Then they were a very awe-inspiring set of fellows. Now they, are so common com-mon that there are none to do them reverence. re-verence. While short on millionaires there were but few bread-riots, no starving poor, few suicides and our bank officials lived and died at a good old age, at home, not in Canada or in Pans. In those good old days a man with twenty fiye thousand dollars was j a rich man, now a man with only that pitiful sum cannot hold up his head in society, and life insurance men, before they would take a risk on him, would want to bar suicide. Note the differ ence in morals betweenitha old days and the new.jWe have a hundred robberies rob-beries and burglaries to one then. Then a lewd woman was a rare avis, especially especi-ally in domestic or priyate life. Now how many gilded and painted ghosts sit at every hearthstone almost in our gilded and painted society ? How many women, seeing the power oi money among the leaders of society, are willing will-ing to sell soul and body to procure it? How many men who would otherwise be reasonably honeBt, are now embezzlers embez-zlers or defaulters? One imagins if I had ten thousand in ready cosh I would speculate and soon possess a million. It wont hart the bank or the business if I use the ten thousand a short time. Thus are thieves made, and we assert fearlessly that it is the accursed and unnatural power given to money these latter days which is at the bottom of nearly all this species . of crime. If instead of falling down and worshipping the rick,or rather their too often illy gotten thousands, we were to investigate the means used in their accumulation we would rate the rich more nearly upon a reasonable basiB, and riches would have far fewer charmB for us. We must set up other idols than riches. Fifty years since, honesty, integrity, cleanliness of living, utter trustworthiness and kindred noble qualities were rated of more worth than money. Money without honor had little value. Now. men steal, overreach, over-reach, and cheat all the early part of their lives, to acquire riches, build churches, endow hospitals and universities univer-sities all the latter part in their vain ' efforts atone by such means for the sins committed in early life in their too ardent pursuit of riches. It must be but a sorry sort of happiness the millionaire mil-lionaire enjoys when he recalls the oppressions of the poor, his dishonesty and cheating in the acquirement of riches. The great founder of the christian religion knocked the black out of this subject in the brief contrast he gives us in the tale of ' Dives and Lazarus. 'That is a very forcible lesson, yet how few of us take it to our hearts while in pursuit of gold. Our government has sinned in this thing moet greviously in adopting policies poli-cies designed to fayor the rich while they serve to grind the faces of the poor; to lift the burdens from the shoulders of the strong and piace them upon those of the weak. All the legislation we have had since the war, so far, has been in favor of the rich and the powerful and against the interest of the poor and the weak. We are reaping the fruits of this sin now in the general upgrowth of anarchy an-archy and lawlessness of all kinds. This is only history repeating itself, and the overturning of Rome will, if a change is not speedily made, have its counterpart in the destruction of this the latest and greatest republic with which humanity has experimented. |