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Show i - - GOD OR MAMMON, WHICH? In the tabernacle the other day the President of the Mormon church arraigned and assailed . the lawyers as a company of non-producers, mere absorhants. But Joseph F. Smith is president of two or three banks. Are banks producers? They make money by loaning the money of their depositors at greater or less interest. What is a bank but an absorbant? It may be said that on one occasion the Master denounced lawyers. But he spoke only on religious grounds. Suppose at the same time he had been president of a bank on Jericho street and another hard by the temple and was employing in those banks incompetent men because be-cause they were his relatives, and was seeing to it that the people were charged full interest on all they borrowed and were further charged in tithing tith-ing twice as much as money itself would bring at interest, how long before there would have been murmurings? There is something grand about a man when, careless of his own fortune, he devotes his life to the welfare of his fellow men. But when his place in a church makes him ex-ofllcio the head of some institutions which are conducted solely to absorb from his neighbors a heavy percentage of their earnings, it naturally excites a suspicion that a great church office, is, after all, only a private snap. That is not the worst feature. It moreover causes suspicious people to ask if, were the emo-uments, emo-uments, the honors and the powers of these high officials taken away, whether there would any church remain. The moral of it all is that one great absorbant ought not to Inveigh against othors who may or may not be absorbants. And will it not be natural for some of the victims vic-tims one of these days to look up and see that the great absorbant is swiftly drawing to itself and its directors the chiofest earnings of the people? peo-ple? If man cannot serve God and Mammon both, is it not about time for the directors of this r corporation known as a church, to decide whether wheth-er an insatiable hunger for money and political 9 power is of God or of Mammon? |