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THE HARDWOOn RECORD. 



The Ma^rv About Town.. 



THE LOVE OF MONEY. 

 I riMu.Miilicr tlmt 1 tlidn't Ki't Ilirou^li 

 ■with the artlrU> iiiKlcr tho lioiulitiB the 

 ••Philosophj- of SuiTCSs" two weeks HK<i. 

 nml while 1 ilon't suppose that iiiniiy of the 

 rtadors of this viUuiilile paper nMiiember 

 that faet. or would notlee the dlffereiiec if 

 I quietly let the matter drop, still, as I said 

 I would linlsh It. I will do so. It is pre- 

 .<iUuiptuous to suppose that Imsy men of 

 the elass that read this paper will remem- 

 l)or what I wrote about two weeks ago. 

 In faet. I do not now remember what I 

 had in mind to add to the article, except 

 that I felt that something should be said 

 ■ In defense of the rich man. 



Everybody jumps onto the rich man and 

 calls him all sorts of names, and holds 

 him up to public contumely as a hog, an 

 enemy of mankind, an oppressor, a tax- 

 dodger, a corruptionist, and, in short, eveiy- 

 thing that is bad and discreditable. Even 

 the bible holds out no hope to him, even 

 saying that it is as diflicult for him to 

 enter the Kingdom of Heaven as for a 

 camel to go through the eye of a needle, 

 ■which is another way of saying it is Im- 

 possible; and it draws a stern and awful 

 picture of the rich man burning in hell's 

 fire and gasping for water, Imploring just 

 a drop from the ex-beggar, Lazarus, who is 

 comfortably reposing in Abraham's bosom. 

 * « • 

 It has gotten so that, in this country, a 

 rich man — a very rich man, I mean — is 

 scarcely considered respectable. He can- 

 not be elected to an office; he is generally 

 supposed and expected to be a snob; the 

 yellow daily papers make his family ridicu- 

 lous, and. taken all around, he has a hard 

 time of it. If he hoards his money he Is 

 called a miser; if he spends it he is called 

 a snob. 



But I believe the rich man is as good 

 as anybody so long as he behaves himself. 

 In fact, it is my observation that men aver- 

 age about the same in one class as in an- 

 other, and I don't look down on the rich as 

 some do. 



I know that it looks bad against a man 

 that he will go slaving away, piling mil- 

 lions on millions that he can never, by any 

 possibility, have use for. It looks as if 

 there ■was something ■wrong somewhere, 

 either that he is just naturally of hoggish 

 nature or that he is "nutty." 



A good many people rate him as just a 

 plain hog. and are inclined to treat him 

 accordingly: but in my estimation this is a 

 gi-oss injustice in nine times out of ten. 

 • * * 

 Every man wants enough money to raise 

 and educate his children in a comfortable 

 but economical manner; enough to insure 

 that he and his wife may not by any pos- 

 sibility come to penury in their old age; 

 but beyond that I do not believe that one 



UY C. D. STRODE. 



man In twenty will go. Just for mere love 

 of money. If a man of gimd taste and 

 lireedlng has a few hundred thousands of 

 dollars, the income from that is all he can 

 use for the personal expenses of himself 

 and family. When he goes beyond a cer- 

 tain limit in his pei-sonal expenditures he 

 p!is.ses the boundary wliieli separates good 

 taste from vulgarity, and loses caste among 

 refinwl and intelligent people. 



So the people look upon the man who 

 piles up riches just from the desire to ac- 

 cumul.'ite that which he cannot use as a 

 hog. and upon he who strives for money 

 that he make ostentatious display in the 

 spending of it, as a fool: and they, having 

 this view, look upon the very rich williout 

 much respect. 



There is no doubt in my mind but the 

 foregoing represents the attitude of the 

 public mind to the very rich; but although 

 I nearly always agree with the public, 1 

 believe that in this matter it is wrong. I 

 believe that very few men pile up money 

 merely for the sake of having it, or from 

 a desire to make a display in .spending It. 



It is success a man is after, and the old 

 desire, inherited from Adam, to be a man 

 among men. and push his schemes through 

 to a triumphant conclusion, is the moving 

 influence in the lives of ninety-nine men 

 out of a hundred. 



In pushing his schemes Lieutenant 

 Peary has had most of his fingers and toes 

 frozen off in the Arctic circle; in pushing 

 his schemes John D. Rockefeller has ac- 

 quired a fortune of something like a billion 

 dollars. No^w, Itockefeller did not, I be- 

 lieve, start into his schemes to make a 

 billion dollars, any more than Peary started 

 into his to get his digits frozen. Those 

 things were Incidental. Each started in 

 to do a certain thing, prepared to accept 

 the responsibilities of their actions. The 

 loss of the fingers and toes and the piling 

 up of a billion dollars ■^vere incidents which 

 could not be avoided. And I am perfectly 

 honest in the statement that I believe 

 Rockefeller's affliction is the worst of the 

 two. I'd rather suffer the inconvenience 

 of being shy a few digits than to have 

 the care and responsibility of Rockefeller's 

 one thousand millions, with the ignominy 

 which attaches to the owner of that 

 amount of wealth in the minds of most 

 people. 



If it were not that his wealth is needed 

 to carry on his great schemes, I would bet 

 a dollar that John 1). Rockefeller would 

 like to step out from under the load of his 

 thousand millions. If he could just step 

 out from under without endangering the 

 stability of things, and could take just a 

 few thousand dollars out of the mighty pile 

 and go away some^v\-here and raise chick- 



ens and fruit and llowers, I bet you that 

 he'd l)e the happiest nian In the world. 



Yo\i see, I've got a pretty good opinion 

 of John. I don't believe that lie Is any 

 meaner or more graKiiing or more hoggish 

 than the rest of us. .\nd 1 don't believe 

 he is an.v bigger fool than the rest of us, 

 or that ho values his peace of mind any 

 less. But he can'l get away. He has 

 built up a great business, and it has made 

 a slave of him. And his master treats him 

 worse than most slave-drivers treated their 

 sliives before the w:ir. He works longer 

 hours at harder work, and, while the nig- 

 gers were generally well fed. Rockefeller's 

 master is slowly starving him to death; 

 that is, he is slowly dying of dyspepsia, 

 which is a form of starvation, the stomach 

 being unable to assimilate the food neces- 

 sary to bodily sustenance. 



And John I). Rockefeller couldn't help 

 making all that money, and he should not 

 be blamed for it or be considered a hog or 

 a fool. When he was young and In his 

 prime he dreamed a dream of bringing all 

 the oil industry of the oil regions in Penn- 

 .sj Ivania under one control. He starte<l in 

 to make his dream come true, and once 

 111' had put his hand to the plow he couldn't 

 turn Ijack. The more difficulties that arose 

 the harder ho had to fight, and, being a 

 man of great and exceptional courage, per- 

 sistency and ability, he brought his dream 

 to realization. Then he found that to pro- 

 tect his monopoly ho would have to control 

 the oil sui)ply of the world, and he has 

 succeeded in that also. 



In fact, John D. Rockefeller has won a 

 great success — one of the greatest ever 

 won in the history of the world — and he 

 sliould be givQn credit with being a very 

 great man. And he would be were it not 

 for that billion dollars. I say to you that 

 Rockefeller has achievements to his credit 

 v.liich would have added to the reputation 

 of Caesar; and that is as high a compli- 

 ment as I can pay him. because I consider 

 CiEsar the greatest man the human race 

 has produced to date — present company ex- 

 cepted. 



The fact that in carrying his schemes to 

 success he has lieen compelled to pile up a 

 fortune of a thousand millions is not his 

 f;!ult. He couldn't help it. and ought not 

 to be blamed. And the fact that he is to- 

 day a half-starved, spindle-shanked, ema- 

 ciated creature, tottering under a load too 

 heavy for a Hercules, a load to which he 

 is chained and from which he cannot 

 escape, is his sad misfortune — the heavy 

 price he has to pay for his success. 



And I don't believe he cares a bit more 

 for money than the average man; probably 

 not so much, for the greater a man is the 

 less store he sets by wealth. It is only 

 the weak, the ignorant or the foolish who 

 worship money for its own sake, or for the 



