168 PERILS.— WEALTH. 



many forms of bribery. It is driving legitimate busi- 

 ness to illegitimate methods. Merchants offer prizes to 

 draw trade, and employ the lottery to enrich themselves 

 and debauch the public. The growth of the spirit of 

 speculation is ominous. The salaries of clerks, the busi- 

 ness capital, the bank deposits and trust funds of all 

 sorts which disappear " on 'change," indicate how wide- 

 spread is the unhealthy haste to be rich. And such 

 have the methods of speculation become that "The 

 Exchange" has degenerated into little better than a 

 euphemism for "gambling hell." " While one bushel in 

 seven of the wheat crop of the United States is received 

 by the Produce Exchange of New York, its traders buy 

 and sell two for ever3" one that comes out of the ground. 

 When the cotton plantations of the South yielded less 

 than six million bales, the crop on the New York Cotton 

 Exchange was more than thirty -two millions. Pennsyl- 

 vania does well to run twenty-four millions of barrels of 

 oil in a year ; but New^ York City will do as much in tAvo 

 small rooms in one week, and the Petroleum Exchanges 

 sold altogether last j'ear two thousand million barrels." i 

 Such facts indicate hoAv small a portion of the transac- 

 tions of the "Exchange" is legitimate business, and 

 how large a proportion is simple gambling. Mammon- 

 ism is corrupting popular morals in many ways. 

 Sunday amusements of every kind— horse-racing, base 

 ball, theaters, beer-gardens, steamboat and railroad 

 excursions — are all provided because there is money in 

 them. Licentious literature floods the land, poisoning 

 the minds of the young and polluting their lives, 

 because there is money in it. Gambling flourishes in 

 spite of the law, and actually under its license, because 

 there is money in it. And that great abomination of 

 desolation, that triumph of Satan, that more than ten 

 Egyptian plagues in one — the liquor traffic— grows and 

 thrives at the expense of everj' human interest, because 

 there is money in it. Ever since .greed of gold sold the 



1 Henry D. Lloyd, North American Review, August, 1883, p. 118. 



