74 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



key to the limitless satisfaction of 

 desire, as the great emancipator from 

 the otherwise hard conditions of life. 

 In the days when wealth was asso- 

 ciated with political power and re- 

 sponsibility, there was a kind of 

 mute feeling in the multitude that 

 such a combination required special 

 qualities of mind and character 

 which were not within the compass 

 of all. To-day wealth stands by it- 

 self, wholly divorced in the popular 

 mind from the notion of responsi- 

 bility ; and there is none so poor as 

 not to consider himself fully quali- 

 fied for the possession of any amount 

 of it. It is not too much to say that 

 many desire wealth, whether they 

 are distinctly conscious of it or not, 

 on account of the irresponsibility 

 which they think or feel goes with it. 

 That this is not a healthful con- 

 dition of the popular mind need 

 hardly be insisted on. Yet it not 

 only exists, but it is fed and minis- 

 tered to in a thousand ways, and 

 combated but in few. The rich, for 

 the most part, justify by their mode 

 of living and the education they give 

 their children the popular idea of 

 the irresponsibility of wealth. Their 

 " pile " is made : henceforth let oth- 

 ers labor for them. In their rela- 

 tions with the laboring classes they 

 too often show a masterfulness bor- 

 dering on tyranny. The conditions 

 of business, they will perhaps say, if 

 for a moment anything in the way of 

 an excuse seems needed, make it ne- 

 cessary to be very authoritative and 

 absolute in dealing with those whom 

 they employ. Perhaps so, but all 

 the same the situation is not a good 

 one ; for, just in proportion as rela- 

 tions of sympathy cease to exist be- 

 tween employer and employed, does 

 the rich man rely more and more 

 upon the power of his wealth, and the 

 poor man look upon wealth as the 

 one thing that counts in differentiat- 

 ing human beings from one another. 



In his idea it is not the "boss" who 

 makes the wealth, it is the wealth 

 that makes the "boss.' 1 



That the daily press greatly tends 

 to intensify the all but universal 

 worship of wealth is obvious to every 

 reader. Everything is measured and 

 discussed in terms of money. Other 

 things, such as literature, art, sci- 

 ence, and religion, are treated as the 

 non-essentials: money is the essen- 

 tial. To express it otherwise, the 

 former are all partial some of them 

 very partial interests ; money is the 

 universal interest. The Armenian 

 atrocities awoke much apparent and 

 some real indignation; but how 

 much action did they set in motion 

 compared with the discovery of gold 

 on the Klondike? The whole po- 

 litical movement of the country is 

 based on money considerations. The 

 offices which still remain within the 

 politician's grasp are the mainspring 

 of all his efforts, while those which 

 the civil-service law has removed 

 from his control give him the feel- 

 ings which a bird seen through a 

 closed window gives to the necessary 

 cat. Popular education, too, is laid 

 out upon lines which point to the 

 supremacy of money as an object of 

 human desire. Not first the health 

 of the body or the health of the 

 mind, or the harmony of the human 

 faculties, or the right ordering of the 

 affections, but first the preparation 

 for grasping money. And so our 

 schools turn out into the world an- 

 nually vast multitudes of would-be 

 money - graspers though many of 

 them are none too well prepared 

 even for that function and an ex- 

 tremely limited number of individu- 

 als who have imbibed any true men- 

 tal or moral culture as the result of 

 from five to ten years' alleged edu- 

 cation. 



The extraordinary amount of at- 

 tention bestowed upon sport and 

 other forms of amusement in the 



